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ANCIENT CITIES 



FROM THE DA WN TO THE DA YLIGHT 



BY 




WILLIAM BURNET WRIGHT 

PASTOR OF THE BERKELEY STREET CHURCH, BOSTON 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1886 



Copyright, 1886, 
By WILLIAM BURNET WRIGHT. 

All rights reserved. 




The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 



Now I saw in my dream, that by this time the Pilgrims 
were got over the Enchanted Ground, and entering into the 
country" of Beulah, whose air was very sweet and pleasant, 
the way lying directly through it, they solaced themselves 
there for a season. Yea, here they heard continually the 
singing of birds, and saw every day the flowers appear in 
the earth, and heard the voice of the turtle in the land. In 
this country the sun shineth night and day ; wherefore this 
was beyond the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and also 
out of the reach of Giant Despair, neither could they from 
this place so much as see Doubting Castle. Here they were 
within sight of the city they were going to, also here met 
them some of the inhabitants thereof ; for in this land the 
Shining Ones commonly walked, because it was upon the 
borders of heaven. 

Pilgrim's Progress. 



\ 



TO THE MEMORY OF 

HER 

IN WHOSE SICK-CHAMBER, THE BEULAH OF HER HOUSEHOLD, 
THESE STORIES OF THE PAST WERE TOLD, 
AND BUT FOR WHOSE REQUEST THEY WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN PRINTED, 
NOR EVEN WRITTEN DOWN, 

(ftfep are ^etricateb 

BY 

HER HUSBAND. 



PKEFACE. 



This little volume does not assume to be 
a learned work. If it were offered as a 
guide-book or a manual it would be an at- 
tempt of the blind to lead, and only the 
blind would follow. I am well aware that 
my knowledge of both archaeology and his- 
tory is far too slight to qualify me as an 
instructor in either. Of these subjects I 
know only so much as is familiar to all my 
ministerial brethren and probably less than 
is known to most of them. The purpose I 
have cherished is a humble one ; so much so 
that even my ignorance may, perhaps, have 
been more of a help than a hindrance to- 
wards its accomplishment. For I have sim- 
ply tried to imitate the child who peers 
through an opened door, and charmed by a 



viii PREFACE. 

glimpse of the wonders within the garden 
calls others to come and see. I have nei- 
ther hoped nor endeavored to do more than 
awaken in those whose attention has not 
been turned toward the subjects brought be- 
fore them in these pages an interest which 
may move them to seek ampler information 
from those who are competent to give it. 

Where my authorities are at variance, 
the brevity of my sketches has compelled 
me simply to adopt the conclusions which 
seem to me correct, without pausing to dis- 
cuss or even to repeat the views of those 
who hold different opinions. 

The cities in which I have tried to inter- 
est the reader were so connected with the 
experiences of the chosen people that an 
acquaintance with any one of them can 
scarcely fail of throwing light upon some 
portion of the Bible. Each city, as the 
reader will perceive, has also been selected 
either because its history appears to illus- 
trate pointedly some utterance of Christ, or 
because the manner in which it aided in 



PREFACE. ix 

preparing for the " New Jerusalem " is ob- 
vious. 

In each sketch I have tried to indicate, 
as distinctly as I could, the character of the 
man or men for whose influence the name 
of the city stands. But when we think of 
the "New Jerusalem," all that draws our 
hearts toward it centres in Him who has 
laid its foundations and is still raising its 
walls, For this reason the concluding pa- 
per, which speaks of the " City which hath 
foundations," is longer than the others, and 
is given in two parts, of which the first is 
designed to show the working, the second 
to unveil the person, of its " Maker and 
Builder." 

I am sincerely grateful to Professors E* 
C. Smyth, J. P. Taylor, and E. G. Coy, of 
Andover, and to the Rev. Lysander Dicker- 
man, of Boston, for permitting me to read 
for their criticisms the proof-sheets of those 
papers which treat of subjects embraced in 
their respective departments of History, As- 
syriology, Greek, and Egyptology. With- 



PREFACE. 



out indorsing my opinions, or becoming in 
the least responsible for any blunders of 
mine, which, in a review so rapid, may eas- 
ily have escaped even their notice, these 
gentlemen have not discouraged me from 
publishing this little book. 

Berkeley Street Church, 
July, 1886. 



CONTENTS. 



~ PAGE 

I. Ur, the City of Saints .... 1 
II. Nineveh, the City of Soldiers . . 18 

III. Babylon, the City of Sensualists . 35 

IV. Memphis, the City of the Dead. . 56 
V. Alexandria, the City of the Creed 

Makers .75 

VI. Petra, the City of Shams ... 97 
VII. Damascus, the City of Substance . . 110 
VIII. Tyre, the City of Merchants . . 125 
IX. Athens, the City of Culture . . 143 
X. Rome, the City of the Law-Givers . 162 

XI. Samaria, the City of Politicians . . 184 

XII. Susa, the City of the Satraps . . 205 

XIII. Jerusalem, the City of the Pharisees 227 

XIV. New Jerusalem: I. The City of God . 250 

XV. New Jerusalem: II. The King . . 270 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



I. 

UK, THE CITY OF SAINTS. 

A glance at the map of Asia shows the 
great plain of Mesopotamia shaped like a 
slender wedge, ending in a blunted point a 
little north of the Persian Gulf. The south 
portion of this wedge was ancient Chaldaea 
or Babylonia. The extent of the region in- 
cluded in that name is not accurately known. 
It appears to have reached somewhat north 
of Bagdad, and to have contained an area 
about equal to that of New England, minus 
Maine and Vermont. 

The northern half of the district was orig- 
inally called Accad, the southern Sumir or 
Shinar, and its primitive inhabitants are 
known to scholars as Accadians, or more cor- 
rectly Sumir- Accadians. 

To-day this region strikes the eye as prob- 
ably the most desolate that has ever been 



2 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



inhabited by men. The Arabian desert 
presses it upon the west, while a sterile waste 
divides it from the mountains of Elam upon 
the east. Southward the space between 
the rivers consists of marshes, which are 
at times a morass, at times a parched bot- 
tom festering in ulcers of putrescent mire. 
Huge mounds covered wholly or in part by 
drifts from the desert emphasize the desola- 
tion. These occur at irregular intervals on 
both sides of the Eujxhrates, and some of 
them might easily be mistaken for enormous 
sand heaps. They are really the rejected 
shells in which the civilization of Christen- 
dom germinated. In them human history 
appears to have begun. At least it has 
not yet been traced beyond them, and Dr. 
Hommel has made it appear probable that 
even the Nile received the seeds of her civ- 
ilization from the Euphrates. 

Each of these desolate mounds was once 
a city. Four thousand years before Christ, 
some of them contained temples, observa- 
tories, libraries, with written laws and a 
literature of which some is still preserved. 

When fragments of burnt clay, bricks, and 
tiles covered with curious markings were first 
observed among these sand heaps, the mark- 



UR, THE CITY OF SAINTS. 3 

ings were mistaken for ornamental work. 
Soon seen to be too regular for that, it was 
conjectured that they might be inscriptions, 
but if so they were in a language of which 
no man living knew a letter. The history of 
the processes by which the inscriptions were 
deciphered and their language mastered re- 
cords one of the most amazing triumphs of 
the human mind. The language can now 
be read almost as accurately as Hebrew or 
Greek. 

Some of the clay fragments proved to be 
parts of books, some public documents, some 
business contracts, some magical charms, 
some hymns and prayers, and some astro- 
nomical records. The origin of the people 
who have left these enduring memorials is 
not yet determined. It is highly probable 
that like all the most virile nations they were 
an amalgamation of many races. 

Six miles west of the Euphrates and more 
than a hundred north of the Persian Gulf 
lies the mound which was once Ur of the 
Chaldees. In Abraham's day it was a har- 
bor on the Gulf, and the Euphrates swept 
its walls, for the ocean has been steadily re- 
treating and the Euphrates moving eastward 
at rates approximately known. The sur- 



4 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



rounding country, now so desolate, was then 
a garden. Irrigated by human skill, the land 
was surpassingly fertile. Ships filled the 
harbor, and the ancestors of J acob bargained 
in the streets. 

To us the most interesting object in the 
city was a temple dedicated to the God of 
the Moon. Two stories of this temple were 
discovered by Mr. Lof tus still standing above 
the mound, the only Chaldaean temple yet 
found which had not been buried beneath 
rubbish. 

Like all the early Chaldaean temples, this 
one at Ur was built in rectangular stages 
rising like a terrace in diminishing size, the 
corners directed with mathematical accuracy 
toward the cardinal points. The walls of 
the ground stage were enormously thick, and 
buttressed to sustain the superincumbent 
weight. They inclosed a solid filling, and 
formed the first of an unknown number of 
stories which appear to have served chiefly 
as a pedestal for the shrine which surmounted 
the structure, and which was reached by an 
external stairway or possibly by an inclined 
plane running around the outer surface of the 
building. The walls of the shrine were prob- 
ably adorned with plates of gold and silver 
and polished agate. The image of the Moon 



UR, THE CITY OF SAINTS. 5 

God, a seated figure beneath a crescent, may- 
have appeared upon it, but more probably 
only a short column of black stone inscribed 
with a star. Here, however, was the ob- 
servatory, where nightly the heavens were 
watched and the observations recorded in soft 
clay afterwards baked in fire or hardened in' 
the sun. For every Chaldsean temple was 
also an observatory. The ground stage was 
built of bricks cemented with bitumen, and 
the bricks were inscribed with the name of 
the monarch by whom it was erected. 

Not later than twenty-two centuries be- 
fore Christ — how much earlier we cannot 
safely say — a religious revival occurred in 
southern Chaldsea. Its exponent was one of 
the most famous monarchs revealed by the 
cuneiform inscriptions. Until very recently 
he was the earliest known to them. A sig- 
net of his time is now in the British Museum. 
It is a small cylinder of green jasper finely 
cut in intaglio with four figures, of which one 
appears to represent the Moon God, and 
bears an inscription which, though not yet 
fully deciphered, contains the king's name 
and seems to mark the seal as belonging to 
one of his viceroys. The delicacy and sharp- 
ness of the cutting implies the use of emery. 
The monarch's signature is well known. It 



6 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



exists upon innumerable bricks from the tem- 
ples he built, and has been variously read 
Urukh, Ourkam, Lig-Bagas, Ur-Bagas, and 
Urea. 

Before his day the cities of southern Chal- 
daea had been, like those of Greece, inde- 
pendent of each other. Lig-Bagas united 
them under one rule. He ranked as the 
oldest of Chaldaean kings until the date of 
Sargon, King of Agade, — seals of whose 
period have also been found, and are quite 
similar to that already described, except that 
the figures carved upon them are different, — 
was fixed by Assyriologists at 3800 b. c. 
Within six years M. de Sarzec has discov- 
ered at Tell-loh, forty-five miles from Ur, 
statues and inscriptions which appear to have 
been carved at a still earlier time. 

Although Lig-Bagas appears to have been 
a successful soldier, what distinguishes his 
work is its religious character. His zeal in 
building temples equaled that of Mahomet 
in destroying them. He is known as " The 
Builder," and although his inscription oc- 
curs more frequently than that of any other 
king before Nebuchadnezzar, he appears to 
have built temples chiefly ; neither sepulchres 
like the kings of Egypt, nor palaces like the 



UR, THE CITY OF SAINTS. 7 

kings of Assyria, nor fortifications like the 
kings of Babylon. The bricks bearing his 
signature belonged to temples, and have been 
found in few other structures. Each temple 
was, as has been said, an observatory, for the 
warfare between ignorance and knowledge 
had not yet been defined as " The conflict of 
Eeligion and Science." 

This monarch made Ur his capital. The 
Moon God was the patron deity of the city. 
The name of the deity was Sin, and his wor- 
ship, spreading at an early date from Ur 
through Arabia, appears to have given its 
name to the most sacred mountain known to 
history, Sinai or the Mount of Sin. 

It will interest Bible students to remem- 
ber that when Abraham with his father came 
forth from Ur of the Chaldees to go into 
the land of Canaan they halted in Haran, 
and there remained until Terah died. Why 
this delay ? No one could offer a reasonable 
conjecture until a clay cylinder written by 
a king of Babylon five centuries before 
Christ, and found a few years ago, informed 
us that from immemorial time Haran had 
been the other chief centre of the Moon 
God's worship in Mesopotamia, second only 
to Ur. There stood in Terah's day the black 



8 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



stone inscribed with the star which it is 
probable Terah had worshiped from his 
childhood. It seems as if the old man, driven 
from his home by the growth of convictions 
given to make his son the apostle of a truer 
faith, faltered at sight of the familiar em- 
blems he had forsaken. He was not strong 
enough to master the reviving memories they 
suggested, but lingered at Haran in the 
clasp of old associations until death set him 
free. 

Every religion which is not rooted in the 
family affections is to be distrusted, and it 
harmonizes with the well-known character of 
Abraham, and with the faith of which he 
was the founder, that he should have waited 
with his old father in Haran " until Terah 
died." 

At the period when Ur emerges into his- 
tory her religion was a system of magic, 
passing into polytheism. But there are 
early traces of a school which worshiped 
one supreme God. There are indications 
also of a fierce conflict of religions, in south- 
ern Babylonia. It may well be that Abra- 
ham was driven into exile on account of his 
monotheistic convictions. This would ac- 
cord with the traditions of Mesopotamia, 



UB, TEE CITY OF SAINTS. 9 

some of which are adopted in the Koran, 
that the patriarch was forced to fly from his 
father's house because he would not engage 
in his father's business, which was the manu- 
facture of idols, and that he was cast into a 
furnace because he would not worship them. 

It has been suggested that as the Assyr- 
ians and the Hebrews belonged to the same 
family, while the Sumirians or people of Ur 
belonged to a different race, the colony which 
settled on the Tigris may have left upper 
Chaldaea at the same period when Abraham 
went forth to Canaan. However that may 
be, the history of the conquest of southern 
Europe by barbarians was anticipated in 
Mesopotamia. When the Shemites took 
possession of Babylonia they were a rude, 
uncivilized race. Mastered by the mental 
superiority of the cultivated people they had 
subdued, they adopted their civilization, and 
in due time won renown under the imperial 
names of Nineveh and Babylon. 

Assyria with her Semiramis, Babylon 
with her Nebuchadnezzar, are the names 
which most powerfully affect the imagina- 
tion when we think of ancient empires. 
Each had a great career and has left a 
gorgeous memory. Both derived their great- 



10 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



tiess from the people represented by Ur, as 
Christendom received the germs of its faith 
from one of the citizens of Ur. 

The speech of that people had become a 
dead language more than a thousand years 
before the birth of Nebuchadnezzar. A new 
tongue supplanted it in Chaldaea. But it re- 
mained until the age of Alexander through- 
out Mesopotamia the language of all learn- 
ing, as Latin was the language of learning 
in mediaeval Europe. 

It was as necessary for Sennacherib to un- 
derstand Accadian as for Henry VIII. to 
know Latin. The Bible and prayer-book 
used by Tiglath-jrileser and Evil-merodach 
in Nineveh and Babylon were written by 
pious men in the language of Ur, a mil- 
lennium before the foundations of Nineveh 
were laid. They had been rendered into As- 
syrian as our Scriptures have been translated 
from the Hebrew. To the time of Cyrus 
the Sumiro- Accadian remained the language 
of law, of science, of religion. Tables used 
in mathematics and astronomy had been 
compiled in it, eclipses had been calculated 
and the spots on the sun noted by those who 
spoke it before Abraham's time. The divi- 
sions of the day into twenty-four hours, of 



UR, THE CITY OF SAINTS. 11 

the year into months, the signs of the zodiac, 
the names of the planets, the system of 
weights and measures employed throughout 
the world until the age of Alexander, the al- 
phabets of Phoenicia and of Greece, and prob- 
ably of Egypt, came from the same source. 
The skillful system, of irrigation by canals 
and water wheels which gave to Mesopo- 
tamia a fertility almost unequaled was in- 
vented by the same ingenious people, and 
from them Babylon learned to cut gems with 
a skill which five centuries before Christ 
could be equaled nowhere else. 

For more than two thousand years the 
region of which Ur was once the capital was 
regarded as a holy land. No tombs of an 
age so old as Nineveh have been found in 
northern Mesopotamia. It is a question 
where the Assyrians buried their dead. It 
has been inferred from the discovery of jars 
containing calcined bones, that the Baby- 
lonians practiced incremation. The con- 
jecture has even been hazarded that the fur- 
nace of Daniel which was heated seven times 
hotter than it was wont to be heated may 
have been one of those used for that pur- 
pose. But it would be difficult to conceive 
of three men walking with " the form of the 



12 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



f ourth " in such a structure, and that crema- 
tion was practiced at all by the ancient As- 
syrians is not yet proved. 

The hypothesis of Mr. Loftus is more 
plausible. Kerbella is a modern Moslem 
town near the Euphrates. There the Moslem 
martyr Husseyn was buried. For that rea- 
son it still is counted holy ground. Inter- 
ment there is believed to expiate all sins. 
The vilest criminal is supposed to be sure of 
heaven if his bones are buried at Kerbella. 
Corpses by tens of thousands are carried 
thither for interment every year. 

For two millenniums the same sentiment 
appears to have prevailed regarding the land 
of Ur. No cemeteries of unquestionable an- 
tiquity have been discovered elsewhere in 
Mesopotamia. In southern Babylonia are 
vast cities of the dead : miles upon miles of 
corpses inclosed in clay coffins, the skeleton 
fingers clutching copper drinking cups, and 
metal plates upon which traces of food are 
still apparent. Interspersed with sepulchres 
of masonry, the coffins lie side by side in 
strata one above another, beginning below the 
natural surface of the ground rising at times 
sixty feet above it, threaded with drains 
skillfully arranged to carry off moisture, and 
flues to allow the escape of gases, in num- 



UR, THE CITY OF SAINTS. 13 

bers beyond all computation. These cities 
of the dead, more populous than the ceme- 
teries of the Nile, extending unmeasured 
distances into the desert, their boundaries as 
yet unknown, were probably the campo santo 
to which for two millenniums the dead were 
brought upon the water ways of the Tigris 
and Euphrates. 

Another fact may illustrate the sanctity 
attributed to Ur, while it draws us towards 
an ancient people with a fellowship of hu- 
man sympathy. 

Amid the ruins of the temple of the Moon 
God were found four duplicate clay cylin- 
ders placed there by Nabonidus, the last 
king of Babylon. Each informs us that the 
monarch whose name it bears repaired the 
temple as an act of piety, and concludes with 
a prayer that his piety may be rewarded by 
blessings upon Belshazzar the son of his 
heart. This was the Belshazzar whose miser- 
able end is described in the Book of Daniel. 
Before the discovery of this cylinder there 
appeared to be an irreconcilable conflict be- 
tween the scriptural statement that Bel- 
shazzar was the last king of Babylon, and 
Berosus, by whom Nabonidus was said to be 
the last king of that city. The two state- 



14 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



ments are reconciled, and the remarkable 
fact that in Dan. v. 7 the position next the 
throne is referred to as that of the third ruler 
in the kingdom explained, by the discovery 
that Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus, 
and that the two were probably associated 
as colleagues. 

A distinctive institution of the people of 
Ur was the Sabbath. From them it was de- 
rived by the Assyrians. The people of Ur 
called it " the day of completed labors," 
and the phrase reminds us of a fact usually 
forgotten by those most zealous in trying to 
enforce the commandment from the Deca- 
logue, namely, that the first and perhaps 
most important half of it reads, " Six days 
shalt thou labor." 

The Assyrians called it the " day of rest 
for the heart," and this is one of the few 
traces of gentleness found in the records of 
that fierce nation. Minute directions for 
the observance of the day, translated from 
the old Accadian, the language of Ur, are 
written on the clay prayer-books of Nineveh. 
On the seventh day "flesh cooked by fire may 
not be eaten, the clothing of the body may 
not be changed ; white garments may not be 
put on, a sacrifice may not be offered, the 



UR, TEE CITY OF SAINTS. 15 



king may not ride in his chariot, nor speak 
in public. The augur may not mutter in a 
secret place, medicine to the body may not 
be applied, nor any curse uttered." 

The command given by Moses begins, 
" Remember " the Sabbath day, as if the 
lawgiver was not instituting a new obser- 
vance, but reenforcing an old one, which had 
been forgotten or neglected. The reason is 
plain when we reflect that Abraham came 
from Ur. 

At Ur slaves enjoyed the protection of 
law. Woman was regarded as the equal of 
man. In domestic affairs she took prece- 
dence. The Assyrians were not pleased by 
this. Their libraries have furnished a vast 
number of clay tablets on which the old Ac- 
cadian literature is translated in parallel 
columns into the Assyrian vernacular. It is 
amusing to observe that whenever the words 
" men " and " women " occur coupled to- 
gether, the ancient language reads " women 
and men," while the Assyrian translation in- 
variably inverts the order and writes " men 
and women." The position Sarah occupied 
in Abraham's household, and the deference 
with which he yielded to her wishes, even 
when it wrung his heart to do so, may indi- 
cate the training of his youth. 



16 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



A dark feature in the religion of Accad 
may not be passed in silence. It permitted 
human sacrifice. In certain rare and ex- 
treme emergencies the son might be offered 
as a victim to God by the father. " The 
son's eyes for the father's eyes, the son's 
heart for the father's heart, the son's life 
for the father's life, the father must give." 

The Bible tells us how the faithful Abra- 
ham was delivered from that darkest of 
superstitions. 

When the voice of God had restrained the 
patriarch from the intended slaughter of 
Isaac, the promise of future blessings came 
to him in words whose whole significance 
depended upon the recollections of a child- 
hood dutfing which he may have watched 
from the temple at Ur the stars trooping in 
endless procession overhead and the waves 
breaking upon the broad beach beneath 
him : " In blessing I will bless thee, and in 
multiplying I will multiply thee as the stars 
of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon 
the sea-shore" 

This brief review of Ur reminds us that 
the strongest influences upon earth are those 
exerted by men acting under religious in- 
spirations. From the land of Ur came forth 



UB, THE CITY OF SAINTS. 17 

the power which made Assyria great, the 
wisdom which until a period comparatively 
recent made the word " Chaldsean " a syn- 
onym for intellectual superiority, and from 
the same city of saints led by a religious in- 
spiration came also the patriarch whose faith, 
purified by trial and strengthened by con- 
flict, shone at last in the face of J esus which 
is the Christ. 



IL 



NINEVEH, THE CITY OF SOLDIERS. 

Nineveh was the most warlike city known 
to history. We cannot except even Sparta, 
which might have served as a closet in one 
of her royal residences. The site of Nineveh 
is marked by the modern town of Mosul. 
It seems the irony of history that the place 
renowned throughout the ancient world for 
its skill in clothing men in iron should be 
famous throughout the modern world for its 
skill in clothing women in gauze. 

Nineveh stands in our thoughts for As- 
syria, because she was the capital of that em- 
pire during the whole period of its grandeur. 
In childhood we were fascinated by the 
classic stories of Assyrian history. They 
began with the mysterious Queen Semiramis 
building the tomb in memory of her husband 
Ninus. They ended with Sardanapalus, the 
Sybarite king, who wore women's clothes and 
wasted his days in splendid sloth until his 
palace was besieged ; fought like a lion at 



NINEVEH, THE CITY OF SOLDIERS. 19 

last, and, before his defenses fell, gathered 
his wives, his concubines, his children, and 
his treasures in one funeral pyre ; covered it 
with spices ; commanded the lutes to play 
and the singers to sing while his own hand 
applied the torch, and so perished amid com- 
mingling sounds of lute and trumpet and 
song and battle-shriek, choked with smoke 
and smothered in perfumes. These fables 
had been widely diffused by Rossini's opera 
and Byron's tragedy, when the school of 
Max Miiller assured us that the suicide and 
the flaming pyre were, like the story of the 
dying Hercules, only one of the many forms 
assumed by the myth of the setting sun ; and 
now the voice of that school is silenced by 
the cuneiform inscriptions. While the As- 
syrian monuments have disproved much of 
the classic story, they have confirmed parts 
of it, and have revealed facts more marvel- 
ous by far than the fables they have super- 
seded. 

Campaigns briefly alluded to in the Bible 
are minutely described in the excavated rec- 
ords. Where the long buried inscriptions 
and the Scripture narratives touch, they fit 
into each other as tenons into mortises cut 
to receive them. Thus, the monuments in- 



20 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



form us that Sennacherib did not invade 
Judaea a second time, but do not give the 
reason. The Bible tells us that his first 
invasion ended in irreparable disaster. The 
Bible says that Sennacherib was murdered 
by his sons, but leaves us to conjecture the 
motives of his murderers. The monuments 
describe the murder and the causes which 
led to it. A clay tablet preserved in the 
British Museum contains the monarch's will. 
He bequeathed his treasures to his youngest 
son, Esar-haddon. That jealousy impelled 
the elder brothers to rebellion and patricide 
is no longer conjecture, but history. 

The Bible affirms that the king of As- 
syria carried Manasseh in chains to Baby- 
lon. But Babylon was not the capital of 
Assyria, and the statement sounded as if we 
should read that Napoleon carried his prison- 
ers to London. Before the critics had ceased 
emphasizing this supposed inaccuracy of 
Scripture, the monuments revealed that one, 
and one only, in the long line of Assyrian 
kings had made Babylon a royal residence, 
and held court there during a part of every 
year. This king, the same Esar-haddon, was 
the monarch who is said in the Bible to have 
transported Manasseh from Jerusalem. 



NINEVEH, THE CITY OF SOLDIERS. 21 

It once appeared that the tenth chapter 
of Isaiah could not have been written by 
the author of the thirty-sixth and thirty- 
seventh chapters, because the statements of 
the two passages contradicted each other. 
Both describe an invasion by Assyria. But 
the tenth describes minutely the approach of 
the invaders to Jerusalem by a route which 
the later chapters show that the Assyrians 
carefully avoided. It also implies that Jeru- 
salem was taken, while the later chapters 
declare explicitly that Jerusalem was not 
taken. These apparent contradictions were 
explained by the decipherment of an inscrip- 
tion recording an invasion of which scholars 
had not dreamed. It occurred ten years be- 
fore that of Sennacherib, and was conducted 
by his father Sargon, an abler general and a 
greater man. The same inscription informs 
us that Sargon passed through the places 
named in the tenth of Isaiah, and that he 
captured Jerusalem. 

The excavated monuments are the most 
valuable commentaries upon those parts of 
the Bible which touch Mesopotamian his- 
tory. They have fixed many important 
Biblical dates with accuracy and certainty, 
and the most bewildering chapter of Holy 



22 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



Writ, the first of Ezekiel, becomes luminous 
to the reader who will but glance over the 
plates in which the palaces of Nineveh have 
been depicted by Rich, Botta, or Layard. 

Assur was the early capital of Assyria. 
An inscription has been found written by 
one of the sovereigns who reigned there 
about 1330 b. c. But Tiglath-Pileser I. is 
the earliest distinctly outlined national hero. 
Memorials of his conquests have been found 
as far west as the island of Cyprus. He 
lived in the twelfth century B. c, and made 
Nineveh an important city in a powerful 
empire. 

Beginning as a band of loosely organized 
robbers, the Assyrians were slowly com- 
pacted into a strong nation and attained 
their greatest grandeur in the second empire, 
which was founded by a usurper named Pul. 

This man appears to have begun life as a 
gardener. He seized the sceptre after the 
manner of the great Corsican, assumed the 
name of the national hero, and ascended the 
throne as Tiglath-Pileser II., April 30, b. c. 
745. The most splendid period of Nineveh 
was a little less than a century later. 

East of the Tigris, and north of its junc- 
tion with the river Zab, are four huge 



NINEVEH, THE CITY OF SOLDIERS. 23 



mounds. They mark approximately the 
corners of a parallelogram, of which the 
north and south diagonal is about twenty, 
and the east and west about sixteen, miles in 
length. The most westerly of these mounds 
lies upon the bank of the Tigris opposite 
Mosul, and is without doubt the site of the 
original Nineveh. 

Opinions regarding the size of the ancient 
city vary. The most probable and the only 
satisfactory supposition seems to be that the 
whole territory included between the four 
mounds, with a still larger space beyond 
them, was at one time described by its name. 
The kings of Assyria were possessed by a 
mania for building palaces. Each of her 
greatest monarchs built one for himself, 
located it a few miles from the palace of his 
predecessor, fortified and made it his capi- 
tal. A new city grew up around each royal 
residence, and when the suburbs of these 
several cities touched each other, they formed 
a vast metropolis, covering a space larger 
than London and only a little smaller than 
the later Babylon. This is the only theory 
which explains the Biblical and classical tra- 
ditions of the vast size of Nineveh, provides 
space for the immense park the city is known 



24 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



to have contained, and at the same time ac- 
counts for the fact that the bricks in each 
of the several mounds are inscribed with 
the legends of different builders. The whole 
of this vast territory which I venture to in- 
clude in the name of Nineveh was probably- 
fortified, while each section would necessarily 
appear, as it actually does, a separate for- 
tress defended with equal care on every side. 
The palace of Sennacherib stood in the old- 
est quarter, which may be conceived as bear- 
ing some such relation to the whole metrop- 
olis as " the City " sustains to London. 

Of this original Nineveh the Tigris formed 
the western boundary. For two and a half 
miles along the bank, west of the palace 
which was itself almost a fortress, ran a 
stupendous wall, flanked by frequent tow- 
ers and pierced for gateways. Each gate- 
way opened between colossal stone sculp- 
tures of lions or bulls with human faces and 
eagle wings. The sculptures faced outwards, 
and were considered the guardian deities of 
the place. A succession of several parallel 
walls, with moats between them, protected 
the eastern approach, and similar defenses 
guarded the city on the north, while the 
Khausar stream was skillfully used to pro- 



NINE V EE, THE CITY OF SOLDIERS. 25 

tect it on the south. Thus, like each section 
of the ultimate Nineveh, it could be taken 
only by a separate siege. 

The streets were paved with blocks of 
limestone, which show to-day the deep ruts 
worn by war chariots twenty-five centuries 
ago. They rang with the tramp of soldiers 
marching in iron armor, with scarlet shields 
and mantles. The men were of larger limb 
and stature, and more muscular, than any 
other known members of the Semite race. 
Their patron deity was Nin, the original of 
the Greek Hercules. They worshiped 
strength, and would say their prayers only to 
colossal idols of stone, lions and bulls whose 
ponderous limbs, eagle wings, and human 
heads were symbols of strength, courage, and 
victory. Fighting was the business of the 
nation, and the priests were incessant f oment- 
ers of war. They were supported largely from 
the spoils of conquest, of which a fixed per- 
centage was invariably assigned them before 
others shared, for this race of plunderers 
was excessively religious. 

The shops of the city were furnished with 
all the appliances of luxury which the world 
could supply. No ladies appeared in the 
streets, for women were rigorously secluded. 



26 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



The gentlemen wore embroidered mantles, 
and carried canes topped with delicate carv- 
ings in ivory, agate, or emerald. 

The palace of Sennacherib stood upon an 
enormous artificial mound, which covered a 
hundred acres. It has been estimated that 
the labor of 20,000 men for six years was 
required to raise the mound alone, and an 
inscription of Sennacherib boasts that he 
employed captives from Chaldaea in rebuild- 
ing the palace upon it. 

The palace itself was the largest, excepting 
only the great structure at Karnak, known 
to have been built by man. The inner sur- 
faces of the walls, gleaming with facings of 
enameled bricks, blue, orange, and red, were 
more gorgeous than those of Venice in her 
prime. The magnificent gateways, ap- 
proached by flights of marble steps, were 
flanked with towers and guarded by the per- 
petually recurring winged bulls and lions. 
The glory of the palace was in the majestic 
halls it contained. These were of unknown 
height, and varied in length between one and 
two hundred feet. They were alike except 
in size. Their floors were of marble inlaid 
with metal arabesques. The upper parts of 
the walls were faced with brilliantly enameled 
bricks, and the lower paneled high as the eye 



NINEVEH, TEE CITY OF SOLDIERS. 27 



could read with alabaster slabs covered with 
sculptures. The sculptures illustrate Assyr- 
ian history. Sieges are depicted, battles 
portrayed, with the names of the monarchs 
who won them. These halls appear to have 
been open to the public, and in them Assyrian 
boys probably received their most effectual 
education. 

An inscription informs us that in the year 
883 b. c. Assur-nizir-pal conquered the city 
of Tela, cut off the hands, feet, ears, and 
noses of its inhabitants, put out their eyes, 
raised two mounds outside the city, one of 
human heads and one of human limbs, and 
burned all the children in fire. 

A sculpture presents the king on his 
throne, grasping a spear, with which he is 
putting out the eyes of prisoners led before 
him by thongs fastened to hooks inserted 
in their jaws. 

We read in the Bible that Sennacherib 
took Lachish. A set of sculptures in his 
palace shows us the monarch on a throne 
before that city reviewing the captives as 
they are driven before him. The history of 
the campaign is written on his cylinder. It 
tells of men impaled, flayed alive, tortured in 
nameless ways. The sound of Nahum's curse, 
" Woe to the bloody city," reached our ears 



28 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



long before we discovered the boastful words 
in which the scribes of Sennacherib recorded 
the horrible facts by which it was elicited. 
The palace of Assur-bani-pal was built upon 
the same mound on which that of his grand- 
father Sennacherib stood. It contained the 
public library. The checks in baked clay, used 
by the people of Nineveh in drawing books, 
have been found among the ruins. Tablets 
found here contain an inscription such as 
Bacon or Franklin might have written, to 
the effect that knowledge is power, for the 
seeing eye, the hearing ear, are the founda- 
tion of greatness. Here could be seen in 
baked clay, or at times perhaps in papyrus, 
the bulletins often sent by generals in the 
field, and the fortnightly reports from the ob- 
servatories throughout the empire. The lat- 
ter were sufficiently minute to note the spots 
upon the sun. 

The literature of Nineveh consisted mainly 
of translations from the classic Sumir-Ac- 
cadian. In the library of Assur-bani-pal 
was found that ancient epic, composed more 
than two millenniums before Christ, which 
relates the adventures of the mythical Gisclu- 
bar, adventures which, vivified in later ages 
by the genius of Greece, have come down to 



NINEVEH, THE CITY OF SOLDIERS. 29 

us in classic forms as the twelve labors of 
Hercules. 

The same library has given us a copy of 
the old Accadian laws, the oldest code known 
in the world. It affords protection to slaves, 
and requires officiating magistrates to renew 
each day their oaths to administer the laws 
with justice. Here Sir Henry Rawlinson 
discovered the Assyrian canon, which makes 
it possible to certify dates in the history of 
that people with accuracy. The Assyrians 
preserved their chronology by naming each 
year after some well-known official. The 
first year of the cycle bore, it might be, the 
name of the reigning sovereign. The next 
that of his chief general, and so on in an 
established order. Thus, pride kept the 
calendar correct. To give his name to the 
year might be a man's only chance of immor- 
tality. The discovery of this catalogue of 
name-years, reaching back to the beginning 
of the tenth century B. c, was perhaps the 
most valuable discovery yet made in Meso- 
potamia, 

The library of Assur-bani-pal was also a 
court of records. Very many contracts 
inscribed in clay have been brought from it 
to the British Museum and there deciphered. 



30 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



One informs us that July 20, 709 b. a, a 
Phoenician trader sold to a lady of Nineveh 
two Hebrew slaves. Price $135, 11,350 for- 
feit if not delivered within a specified time. 
The price of real estate is known from deeds 
in clay deposited in the same place. A house 
was sold on the 16th of May, 692 b. c, in 
Nineveh for $45. 

After centuries of almost perpetual war, 
the rate of interest 700 b. c. was at Nineveh 
only four per cent., and for copper three' per 
cent. The fact reminds us that the nations 
of the old world could afford to be always 
fighting, if only they were victorious. The 
spoils of victory paid the bills. 

Among the most interesting tablets from 
Nineveh are primers prepared for children. 
One of these tells us it was specially de- 
signed to teach the king's granddaughter to 
spell. Many of these inscriptions, written 
in letters so fine that a magnifying glass is 
required to read them, suggest that one was 
used in writing them. Since one lens, much 
warped by the action of fire, has already 
been found, it is not improbable that others 
may be discovered. 

The great park of Nineveh was probably 
laid out by Tiglath-Pileser I. He designed 
it for a botanical garden. By him it was 



NINEVEH, THE CITY OF SOLDIERS. 31 



planted with exotics brought from the vari- 
ous lands he had conquered. In a later age 
it served as the royal hunting-ground. The 
chase was the recreation, as war was the 
business, of the Assyrian monarchs, and 
when luxury had made them too indolent 
or too effeminate to hunt among the moun- 
tains, they indulged their taste by slaugh- 
tering wild beasts, which had been caught 
and kept in cages for the purpose. 

Not many years before the fall of Nineveh 
a military pageant moved through its streets. 
The army had returned from a successful 
campaign in the east. The king visited the 
temple to give thanks in the presence of all 
his army. We can conceive the sight. The 
soldiers marched with scarlet shields and glit- 
tering spears. The splendid war chariots, 
the terror of the old world, the artillery of an- 
cient warfare, appeared in line. They were 
of iron, richly embossed, and gorgeous with 
dashes of vermillion. Each bore a nobleman 
armed with bow and quiver, and protected by 
a huge shield held before him. The charioteer 
stood behind and guided the steeds by long 
leathern reins. But the most conspicuous 
chariot in the pageant is not drawn by horses. 
It contains a single occupant. He is his own 
charioteer. It is Assur-bani-pal, the Sardan- 



32 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



apalus of Greek history. He wears a lofty- 
crown not unlike that of the Vatican. His 
close-fitting mantle is richly embroidered, 
probably with gold and gems, though that 
the sculptures do not clearly show. The 
reins are studded with gold bosses ; and the 
steeds harnessed in silver chains before the 
chariot are four captive kings. 

An elaborate sculpture shows the same 
monarch in the palace garden banqueting 
with his queen. The king reclines upon a 
couch, his limbs covered with a robe of rich 
embroidery. The queen is seated in a high- 
backed chair. They are pledging each other 
in goblets of ornamented gold. Musicians 
appear among the trees playing on several 
different kinds of instruments, and, pendent 
from the branches above, hangs the head of 
a king. " Woe to the bloody city." 

The announcement by Sennacherib upon 
his cylinder, that he had salted and packed 
in baskets the heads of his captives, which 
he had doubtless sent to decorate the walls 
of the capital, seems to have excited no sur- 
prise. " Woe to the bloody city. 9 ' 

At last when every nation from Egypt and 
Lydia to Persia had been outraged by the 
warriors of Nineveh; when successive con- 



NINEVEH, THE CITY OF SOLDIERS. 



33 



querors, Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon, Sennach- 
erib, had died in the field or perished by 
assassination, the inevitable end came. A 
coalition similar to that which overwhelmed 
the first Napoleon was formed against As- 
syria. Nabopolassar, the ablest Assyrian 
general then living, played the r61e of Mu- 
rat by deserting to the enemy. Saracus, the 
last Assyrian king, was besieged in his cap- 
ital. For more than two years the invincible 
city resisted. Then occurred an unprece- 
dented flood in the Tigris. The enemy still 
pressed the siege. The river wall of the 
palace was undermined and fell. Nineveh 
was taken. The king fired his own palace 
and perished in the flames. 

"With the overthrow of Nineveh the As- 
syrian nation vanished. At the date of her 
greatest power, when her kings were feared 
throughout Asia more than Napoleon was 
ever feared by Europe, one statesman in an 
obscure province of the empire saw the seeds 
of her ruin ripening, and cried in the ears of 
his frightened countrymen : " Fear her not, 
for God is against her. Nineveh ! thy 
crowned ones are as the locusts, and thy 
captains as the great grasshoppers which 
camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when 



34 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



the sun is arisen they fly away and their 
place is not known where they are." 

Within sixty years the prediction was 
fulfilled. Three centuries later Alexander 
fought the battle of Arbela within sight of 
the mounds of Nineveh and saw no sugges- 
tions of a city there. Nine centuries later 
the battle which prepared Western Asia to 
become Mahometan was fought upon the 
site of Nineveh, and neither of the contend- 
ing armies knew they were treading above 
the streets of a buried metropolis. A millen- 
nium later, Niebuhr, in charge of an expedi- 
tion sent to explore the ruins of Nineveh, 
passed over its site without a suspicion that 
he had reached it. But the stones at last 
have spoken, and have given in their testi- 
mony to the truthfulness of Him who said: 
" They that take the sword shall perish by 
the sword." " The meek shall inherit the 
earth." 



III. 



BABYLON, THE CITY OF SENSUALISTS. 

# 

Two observations seem to be required by way of 
preface to the following paper : — 

1. The description given of the size of Babylon and 
the magnitude of its walls rests upon the testimony 
of eyewitnesses, and is credited by the weightiest 
authorities at the present day. It has been doubted 
by modern writers of repute, not because the proof 
is weak, but because the facts are marvelous. They 
appear so to those familiar only with modern times. 
But they are scarcely surprising to those whose minds 
have dwelt among ages and peoples where a single 
will controlled amounts of naked human labor which 
were practically unlimited. Mr. Grote indorses the 
statement that the Chinese wall alone contains more 
material than all the buildings in the British Em- 
pire. If we could enter the Babylon of Nebuchad- 
nezzar after driving our carriage twelve hundred 
miles along the top of that wall, or even after scaling 
one of the pyramids, we should not be greatly aston- 
ished at sight of the city described by Herodotus. 

2. I make no attempt to fix the date or the author- 
ship of Daniel. I think Ewald was correct in as- 
signing it to the age of the Maccabees. Dean Milman, 
who holds the same opinion, believes in the accuracy 
of its historic statements. Cuneiform discovery has 



36 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



confirmed those statements at several points, and 
justifies, as I think the following paper will show, 
the impression that the author of the Book, whoever 
he may have been, and in whatever age he may have 
lived, possessed information of which the classical 
authorities were ignorant. The source of that infor- 
mation cannot here be discussed. 

Babylon was old before Nineveh was born. 
It was one of the earliest and most im- 
portant cities of that Accadian race which 
founded " Ur of the Chaldees." Cuneiform 
inscriptions have identified it as the Babel 
of Genesis, and record a tradition of the 
tower builded there which varies little from 
that contained in the Bible. The name 
" Babil," which signified in the primitive 
tongue " Gate of God," resembled in sound 
the Hebrew word meaning " Confusion," 
and was, therefore, incorporated in the Scrip- 
tural narrative as having that significance. 

During the whole period of Ninevite su- 
premacy, Babylon ranked as an important 
city. As the source of science, literature, 
and especially religion, she held precedence 
of Nineveh. She was aureoled with some- 
thing of that religious reverence which gilded 
Rome during the Middle Ages, and while sub- 
ject to Nineveh nursed that fierce scorn of 



BABYLON, THE CITY OF SENSUALISTS. 37 

her conquerors which intellect naturally feels 
for brute force ; the contempt of the Greek 
for the barbarian, of the Jew for the Gentile. 
Though conquered and occupied at a very- 
early period by the same race which ruled 
from Nineveh, and though Assyria w r as prob- 
ably a colony which left Babylonia about 
the time when Abraham left Ur, Babylon 
was more closely bound than Nineveh in 
the great traditions of the Accadians. 

The earliest king in Babylonia whose date- 
is known was Sargon of Agade. His date 
has been fixed at 3800 b. c. on the evi- 
dence of an inscription by Nabonidus, the 
last independent king of Babylon, in which 
Nabonidus placed the reign of Sargon 3,200 
years before his own. A small oval of hard 
pinkish gray stone inscribed by this Sargon 
was found by Mr. Rassam. It is now in the 
British Museum. The stone is drilled, pol- 
ished, and cut with a skill which implies a 
high degree of culture, and the letters are 
of the kind employed after the primitive 
picture writing had ceased to be used, and 
before the later cuneiform letters had been 
developed into their ultimate forms. The 
legendary history of Sargon bears a remark- 
able similarity to that of Moses. He is said 



38 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



to have been placed by his mother immedi- 
ately after his birth in an ark of rushes, and 
abandoned to the waters of the Euphrates, 
whence he was rescued and became a great 
monarch. 

Babylon was conquered by Tiglath-Pileser 
I. about 1100 B. c, and remained in partial 
or complete subjection to Assyria during 
much of the period between the reign of that 
monarch and the fall of Nineveh. By Sen- 
nacherib it was almost entirely destroyed and 
left little more than a heap of ruins. 

While the coalition which overwhelmed 
Nineveh was forming, Nabopolassar, the 
ablest Assyrian general then living, was sent 
by the king of Nineveh to Babylon to quell 
an insurrection there. He betrayed his sov- 
ereign by putting himself at the head of the 
rebels he had been sent to subdue, joined 
the allies in their attack upon Nineveh, 
usurped the throne he had helped to empty, 
transferred the capital from Nineveh to Bab- 
ylon, and so founded about 610 B. c. the 
great Babylonian Empire, which soon came 
to be Assyria enlarged, under a new name 
and an abler ruler. 

Nabopolassar was succeeded by his son 
Nebuchadnezzar. That monarch, a brilliant 



BABYLON, THE CITY OF SENSUALISTS. 39 

general, an able statesman, a magnificent 
patron of the arts and sciences, was a pro- 
foundly religious man. He united in him- 
self the functions of general, king, and pope. 
His ambition equaled his ability. Inherit- 
ing a kingdom scarcely larger than Portu- 
gal, he extended its limits over most of the 
then known world. The historic Babylon 
was purely his creation. His power was au- 
tocratic, and he could have said more truth- 
fully than Louis XIV., u Iam the State." 
By an almost universal conquest, he inaugu- 
rated a general peace, and although the He- 
brew prophet called him " the Hammer of 
the whole earth," he strove to retain in cords 
of silk the nations which Nineveh had bound 
in fetters of iron. His supreme ambition 
was to make Babylon what Napoleon strove 
to render Paris, — the incomparable metrop- 
olis of the world. Hence it came to pass 
that history records, perhaps, no other reign 
so lavishly adorned as his with both the tri- 
umphs of war and the splendors of peace. 
Vast resources enabled him to accomplish 
his designs. He had drained the treasuries 
of all the richest nations into his own, and 
taken captive an almost unlimited number 
of men to labor in executing his great works* 



40 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



The timber of Lebanon was his. The clay 
and bitumen beneath his feet supplied un- 
limited materials for building. The fleets 
of Phoenicia sailed at his orders. They 
brought him gold, iron, and tin, from Af- 
rica, Spain, and England. Their mariners, 
transported to the Euphrates, navigated his 
ships to India and Ceylon, and returned 
with gems, pearls, spices, and precious woods. 
The camels of Arabia bore his freights across 
the desert. The science and skill of Chaldsea 
were at his command to make the most effec- 
tive use of his resources. These were some 
of the facilities which enabled him to make 
"this great Babylon," which he "built by 
the might of his power and for the glory of 
his majesty," " the Lady of Kingdoms, the 
Glory of the Chaldees' Excellency, the Joy 
of the whole Earth." 

Though Nebuchadnezzar could be cruel 
when he considered cruelty expedient, his 
impulses were kind. He adopted a policy 
more enlightened than that which Assyria 
had pursued, and endeavored to perpetuate 
his empire by cultivating commerce and the 
arts of peace. By his marriage with a Me- 
dian princess he gained the friendship of the 
only people he could not conquer, the brave 



BABYLON, THE CITY OF SENSUALISTS. 41 

mountaineers, who may be justly called the 
Swiss of ancient Asia. 

The Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar occupied 
a square of which each side was nearly fifteen 
miles in length, and was bisected by the Eu- 
phrates diagonally from northwest to south- 
east. This square was inclosed by a deep 
moat, flooded from the river. The clay ex- 
cavated in digging the moat, moulded into 
bricks and laid in bitumen, formed the walls 
of the city. These walls, more than three 
hundred feet high and more than seventy 
thick, and protected by parapets, afforded 
a commodious driveway along their top of 
nearly sixty miles, needing only aerial bridges 
over the Euphrates river. The waters of 
the river were forced to flow through the 
city between quays of masonry which equaled 
the walls in thickness and height. The walls 
were pierced at equal intervals for a hundred 
gates, and each gateway closed with double 
leaves of ponderous metal, swinging upon 
bronze posts built into the wall. Fifty 
broad avenues, crossing each other at right 
angles, joined the opposite gates of the city, 
and divided it into a checkerboard of gigan- 
tic squares. The river quays were pierced 
by tw r enty-five gates like those in the outer 



42 



ANCIENT CITIES, 



walls. One of the streets was carried across 
the river upon an arched bridge, another ran 
in a tunnel beneath the river bed, and ferries 
plied continually across the water where the 
other streets abutted. 

The great squares of the city were not all 
occupied by buildings. Many of them were 
used as gardens and even farms, and the 
great fertility of the soil, caused by irriga- 
tion, producing two and even three crops a 
year, supplied food sufficient for the inhab- 
itants in case of siege. Babylon was a vast 
fortified province rather than a city. 

On the right of the Euphrates, in Borsippa, 
I think within the walls, stood the Temple 
of the Spheres. Its foundations had been 
laid by an earlier king, but the building was 
erected by Nebuchadnezzar. It arose, like 
the Temple of the Moon God at Ur, in a 
succession of seven rectangular stages or 
platforms, of which the lowest was 272 feet, 
and the highest twenty feet, square. The 
sides of each platform were faced with bricks, 
gorgeously colored and glazed. The ground t 
stage, twenty-six feet high, was black like jet, 
the color of the planet Saturn. The next 
orange, Jupiter. The next blood red like 
ruby glass, Mars. The next was covered 



BABYLON, THE CITY OF SENSUALISTS. 43 

with plates of burnished gold, in honor of 
the sun. Above this, pale yellow, Venus. 
Mercury, deep blue, gleaming like a sap- 
phire. The highest, plated with polished sil- 
ver, represented the moon. Here stood the 
shrine, and here, if we may judge from the 
analogy of other Chaldaean temples, was the 
observatory, in which observations were taken 
with instruments of sufficient accuracy to 
discover the satellites of J upiter. The build- 
ing appears to have been solid, and was as- 
cended by an inclined plane circling around 
its outer surface. In high lights it must 
have glittered like cut gems laid nearly in the 
order of rainbow colors, and the description 
of it suggests the imagery of the Apocalypse. 

There is a curious fact which I do not re- 
member to have seen noticed, and of which 
I will not here venture to suggest the ex- 
planation. Babylon stands in the Book of 
Revelation as the emblem of all the abom- 
inations which are to be destroyed by the 
power of Christ. But Babylon is the one 
city known to history which could have 
served as a model for J ohn's description of 
the New Jerusalem: "the city lying four 
square," " the walls great and high," the 
river which flowed through the city, " and 



44 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



in the midst of the street of it, and on either 
side of the river the tree of life, bearing 
twelve manner of fruits ; " " the founda- 
tions of the wall of the city garnished with all 
manner of precious stones," as the base of the 
walls inclosing the great palace were faced 
with glazed and enameled bricks of brilliant 
colors, and a broad space left that they might 
be seen, — these characteristics, and they are 
all unique, have been combined in no other 
citv. 

On the east of the Euphrates stood the 
palace of Nebuchadnezzar. Little is known 
of its appearance. An inscription boasts 
that the strong defensive walls which in- 
closed it were raised in fifteen days. The 
mention of it recalls the worst and the best 
traits of the great monarch's character. For 
here was brought that Jewish king whom 
is ebuchadnezzar made blind after slaying his 
two sons before his eyes. And here, too, 
when his Median wife longed for her native 
hills, Nebuchadnezzar erected the celebrated 
hanging gardens, to solace her homesickness 
with a miniature of her fatherland. Enor- 
mous arches of masonry were piled one upon 
another, supporting hills of earth where wild 
flowers nestled amid the roots of forest 



BABYLON, THE CITY OF SENSUALISTS. 45 

trees, and artificial crags clown which dashed 
brooks, kept full from the Euphrates by- 
water screws, used here some centuries be- 
fore they were invented by Archimedes. 

Among those waiting in the palace court, 
permit me to point out two who may any 
morning have been present. One is a Baby- 
lonian gentleman of leisure. Over a tunic 
of white linen he wears a flowing mantle, 
richly embroidered, and caught about the 
waist by a girdle studded with gems. His 
thick black hair and beard are carefully 
perfumed, and like the gentlemen of Nine- 
veh, he carries a cane with a jeweled han- 
dle. 

The other is a military officer. Instead 
of a mantle he wears a coat of mail. It fits 
him like a shirt. The sleeves reach half 
way to the elbows, and the skirts descend to 
the knees. It is formed of copper or bronze 
medallions, each about the size of an Eng- 
glish penny, a little larger than an Ameri- 
can copper cent, fastened upon leather and 
slightly overlapping each other like the 
scales of a fish. Each medallion is em- 
bossed in delicate relief with the figure of 
the god Bel, or Nebo, his Hermes. 

The two are conversing. No telephone 



46 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



can bring a conversation over twenty-three 
centuries, but we know the subjects which 
most absorbed the attention of Nebuchadnez- 
zar's courtiers at one period of his reign, 
and the views they took of it. The officer 
has returned, we will suppose, from in- 
specting the great canal which joins the 
Euphrates with the sea, flowing five hun- 
dred miles, and is speaking of the Hebrew 
captives w r hom Nebuchadnezzar had settled 
along its banks. They were celebrated 
singers, and the Babylonians were excep- 
tionally fond of music, as their monuments 
show. The officer relates that when he 
asked one of the slaves, whom he saw with 
harp in hand, for a song, the insolent fellow 
hung his harp upon the willows which 
fringed the great canal, and broke forth 
with a wild, sad cry : " They who have car- 
ried us away captive require of us a song ! 
How can I sing the songs of Zion in a 
strange land! If I forget thee, O Jerusa- 
lem, may my right hand forget her cun- 
ning ! If I remember not thee above my 
chief joy, may my tongue cleave to the roof 
of my mouth." 

" But a stranger thing occurred," the offi- 
cer may have continued. " When I visited 



BABYLON, TEE CITY OF SENSUALISTS. 47 



the same region some time ago, I saw a 
young Hebrew, he seemed a mere boy, sur- 
rounded by a crowd of his countrymen. He 
was showing them a tile, upon which he had 
drawn a picture of Jerusalem besieged by 
our armies. It was just after Zedekiah had 
been crowned by our king, and no mortal 
imagined he would be fool enough to rebel. 
But this Jew, whom they called Ezechiel, 
declared his picture represented what was 
actually coming, and he should send it as a 
warning to the king of Jerusalem. Time 
proved that he was right, and strangely, 
too, when we took the city for the last time, 
we found there a very old man named J ere- 
miah, who for many years had been saying 
the same things as this Ezechiel. His coun- 
trymen had treated him sometimes as a mad- 
man, and sometimes as a traitor, but Nebu- 
chadnezzar received him into distinguished 
favor." 

What most excites both soldier and civil- 
ian is suggested by that last remark, the 
influence these Jews have gained at court. 
They speak of Daniel and his three friends, 
and express strong hopes that the approach- 
ing festival will end their influence forever. 

That festival it is possible to describe 



48 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



with considerable minuteness. It appears 
to have been the dedication of the great 
statue placed upon the temple of Bel. That 
temple, of the same general pattern as the 
Temple of the Spheres, was said to have 
been higher than the pyramid of Gizeh. 
The statue in the shrine upon its summit 
was of gold. It has been supposed that the 
festival described in Daniel could not have 
been that which occurred at the placing of 
this statue, because the image in Daniel is 
said to have been set up in the plain of Dura. 
But if, as Mr. Budge believes, the " plain of 
Dura" was one of the three districts in Baby- 
lon, each called Duru or fortress, the diffi- 
culty disappears. 

The festival must have been one of great 
significance. Bel was the national deity. 
His image was to Babylon what the cross of 
St. George is to England, or the star span- 
gled banner to the United States. 

The monarch was the representative of 
Deity, and therefore the statue of the God 
was also the statue of the king. Pride, pa- 
triotism, and devotion combined to prompt 
the most extravagant display. Holiday was 
proclaimed. Civil and military functiona- 
ries were assembled from all parts of the 



BABYLON, THE CITY OF SENSUALISTS. 49 

empire. The different instruments men- 
tioned in Daniel have been identified by 
help of sculptures from Nineveh, and prove 
that the leader of the orchestra understood 
that combination of wind and stringed in- 
struments which is attributed to Mozart. 
Probably as the first rays of the rising sun 
flashed upon the golden image six hundred 
feet in air, the orchestra had orders to be- 
gin. At sound of the music the multitude 
were commanded to prostrate themselves in 
worship. The sight of the great temple, the 
flash of the splendid image, the sound of 
martial music, might well produce a sensu- 
ous excitement which would seek relief in 
adoration. 

It is probable that the whole empire 
shared in these solemnities. When the 
golden spike which joined the Atlantic to 
the Pacific was driven, the instant the ham- 
mer fell was telegraphed over all the conti- 
nent. No mysterious wires conveyed the 
signal across the plains of Chaldaea, but it 
is not impossible that trumpeters stationed 
within sight and hearing of each other 
spread the news five hundred miles as fast 
as sight and sound could carry it, for this 
was probably the proudest day of Nebu- 



50 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



chadnezzar's great career. But there were 
three men in Babylon who would not wor- 
ship him, nor " bow down before the image 
which Nebuchadnezzar, the king, had sat 
up." They saw working beneath the splen- 
dor the hidden leaven of decay. 

The reign of Nebuchadnezzar continued 
forty -three years. He left Babylon the 
metropolis of the world. Thither Egypt 
sent for sun-dials and water-clocks. Thence 
the ladies of the Orient received the fash- 
ions, as Christendom follows the fashions 
set by Paris. From Babylon Tyre took the 
weights and measures which regulated com- 
merce. From Babylon the Greeks received 
the tables on which their science was based, 
and Lydia the lutes on which she learned at 
last to excel her teacher. 

To Babylon Egypt sent her finest gold 
and her choicest ivory, Tyre her most gor- 
geous dyes, India her largest pearls, Arabia 
her choicest spices, Media her agates and 
emeralds, which nowhere else could be so 
finely cut. The entire vintage of Helbon 
was reserved for the court of Babylon, as 
that of Champagne was monopolized by Na- 
poleon. Thither Greece sent her most beau- 
tiful slaves, for in Babylon a dancing-girl 



BABYLON, THE CITY OF SENSUALISTS. 51 



might be sold for the price of a year's pay 
to a thousand soldiers. The great Babylo- 
nian banking - house of the Egibi, whose 
checks and receipts in clay still exist in great 
numbers, occupied for five generations at 
Babylon the place filled in Europe by the 
Rothschilds since Waterloo. 

But excess of luxury soon sapped the 
strength of Babylon's manhood. From cups 
of gold studded with jewels the profligate 
nobles drank their own death. The debauch- 
eries into which the people sank with fearful 
rapidity may not be described. A law was 
enforced, probably the most infamous known 
to the annals of our race, which was designed 
by pandering to the grossest passion of our 
nature to attract strangers to Babylon by 
making it a paradise, or rather a stew, of 
sensuality. That nameless horror was con- 
spicuous among the causes of her ruin. 

Attracted by the wealth and luxury of 
Babylon, the Medes took possession of the 
city and its influence rapidly declined. 

In the present condition of cuneiform dis- 
covery it is not possible to give a description 
of the capture of Babylon by Cyrus. There 
are three sources of information. 



52 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



I. Herodotus tells us that the city was 
besieged for some time by Cyrus, and finally 
taken by a stratagem, like that attempted 
by General Grant at Vicksburg. The river 
was diverted from its channel, and the be- 
siegers entered by its dry bed at night when 
the gates were left carelessly open during 
the celebration of a religious festival. A 
cuneiform inscription deciphered by Sir 
Henry Eawlinson enabled his brother to 
identify with great plausibility this festival 
with Belshazzar's feast as described in Dan- 
iel. Professor Ewald wrote : " But among 
all the later reminiscenses of the conquest of 
Babylon by Cyrus, one never-to-be-forgotten 
feature always rises above the rest, namely, 
the amazing rapidity with which the victory 
was gained, and the way in which the whole 
Chaldsean supremacy was shattered by it, 
at a single blow. . . . The capture of Baby- 
lon by Cyrus in a single night, while the 
Babylonians were celebrating in careless ease 
a luxurious feast, is the fixed kernel of the 
tradition in all its forms. 9 ' 

II. Inscriptions have lately been read 
which were written by Cyrus himself. They 
describe the death of Nabonidus, the last 
king of Babylon, and declare that Cyrus took 



BABYLON, THE CITY OF SENSUALISTS. 53 

the city without fighting ; that there was no 
siege, but the people opened their gates and 
received him with joy. 

III. The account in Daniel, after describ- 
ing Belshazzar's feast, says only : " In that 
night was Belshazzar the king of the Chal- 
dseans slain, and Darius the Mede took the 
kingdom." All attempts to identify this 
Darius have been thus far futile. 

The recently deciphered cylinder of Cyrus 
affirms that though he entered Babylon with- 
out fighting, and was joyfully welcomed by 
its people, " a band of rebels " shut them- 
selves up in a place identified as the royal 
palace on the left of the river, which was 
strongly fortified, and held out a little while 
against him. The little while appears to 
have been about four months. Professor 
George Rawlinson is of opinion that Belshaz- 
zar, who was then in command of the Baby- 
lonian army, with such soldiers as remained 
faithful, constituted " the rebels " mentioned 
by Cyrus, and that the feast recorded in 
Daniel occurred upon the night when they 
were captured. 

We must wait for further explorations to 
determine whether he is correct. 

What may be safely said now is this : The 



54 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



tradition of the capture of Babylon, which 
as Professor Ewald affirms has prevailed 
universally from the time of Herodotus, un- 
questionably prevailed in the age of the Mac- 
cabees, when the Book of Daniel was proba- 
bly written. The account in Daniel is not 
necessarily compromised by the complete 
overthrow of that tradition. The account of 
the capture of Babylon given by Cyrus him- 
self, which was a startling surprise to scholars 
a few years ago, and compelled them to re- 
construct all that has been written about it 
for more than two thousand years, except 
what is written in Daniel, is not inconsistent 
with the account given in that Book, for 
while the profane historians speak of Nabo- 
nidus as the last king of Babylon, and the 
Bible assigns that place to Belshazzar, the 
inscriptions give the strongest grounds for 
believing that the two reigned together, and 
allow us to believe that though the " fixed 
kernel" of the tradition mentioned by Ewald 
cannot be the capture by Cyrus of Babylon 
itself erroneously described by Herodotus, it 
may have been the capture of that vast forti- 
fied inclosure, a city within the city, correctly 
conceived of in Daniel. 

The last memorable incident in the his- 



BABYLON, THE CITY OF SENSUALISTS. 55 

tory of Babylon furnishes an epitome of her 
career from the death of Nebuchadnezzar,, 
For there when Alexander the Great had 
crucified the physician who might have 
healed him, and had squandered fourteen 
million dollars in funeral orgies over the 
body of his friend Hephsestion, he died the 
death of a common drunkard, bequeathing 
with his latest breath, as his generals stood 
around him, his kingdom " To the strong- 
est.' 9 



IV. 



MEMPHIS, THE CITY OF THE DEAD. 

A GKEEN ribbon a tliousand miles long, 
and varying in width from two to twelve, 
though rarely exceeding five ; striped with 
a central line of umber ; raveled at the north- 
ern end and the threads spread like a half- 
open fan : this ribbon of verdure stretched 
directly south from the Mediterranean upon 
a limitless expanse of scorching, dazzling 
sand, — that was Egypt, the land " in which 
it seemed always afternoon." 

The Xile banks are a picture of life in 
death. Their narrow strip of fertility lies 
in the desert like a solitary plank in the 
ocean, and the earliest inhabitants, who 
came from Asia, appear to have felt upon it 
as drowning men who know they have but 
an hour to live. 

The laws of Moses never glance at a fu- 
ture life. The laws of the land whence 
Moses came scarcely glance away from the 
future life. The Pentateuch leaves us doubt- 



MEMPHIS, THE CITY OF THE DEAD 57 

ful whether Moses ever thought of an exist- 
ence beyond the grave. The study of Egypt 
creates an impression that the Egyptians 
thought of little else. They painted their 
homes with pictures of heaven and hell. 
Their story-books relate the adventures of 
souls which have left their bodies. Their 
Kobinson Crusoes and Swiss Family Robin- 
sons are dead people. Their kindergartens 
taught little children charms to frighten 
away the daemons that would try to hinder 
their souls from crossing the great desert to 
the throne of God, whither they must start 
the instant they died. Even the monarch 
could not be buried until a tribunal named 
the Court of the Dead had convened around 
his body and pronounced him, in the pres- 
ence of forty accusers, guiltless of the sins for 
which it was supposed his spirit was at the 
same hour being tried by the unseen powers. 
The laws, the art, and the social manners of 
Egypt were calculated to impress upon the liv- 
ing the nearness and superlative importance 
of the life to come. When an Egyptian at- 
tained to his majority, he celebrated not the 
day of his birth, but that of his death. He 
began to build his tomb. There he believed 
his soul would often return, and there, if he 



58 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



were judged worthy, it would after three 
thousand years be reunited to his body, 
which must therefore be preserved for its re- 
ception. 

This care for the life to come, mastering 
care for the life that now is, moulded the 
civilization of Egypt. It gave to her monu- 
ments their unique and august solemnity, 
and to her cast of thought a quality which 
makes the attempts at humor in her litera- 
ture affect us as if we had seen the monkeys 
she trained to gather her vintages, plucking 
grapes in the shadow of the pyramids. 

This consciousness of life in death is pre- 
sented most impressively at Memphis, the 
earliest capital and the permanent religious 
centre of the land of the Pharaohs. All the 
grandeur of the Nile was born at Memphis 
and buried at Alexandria. 

Memphis was the abode of the sacred bull, 
in which deity was believed to be incarnate. 
Its birthday was the Egyptian Christmas. 
Its image in gold, bronze, or ivory was the 
Egyptian's crucifix. The " golden calf " cast 
by Aaron in the wilderness was one of its 
effigies. 

At Memphis it is probable that Abraham 
was welcomed by Pharaoh, and Joseph re- 
ceived his father Jacob. 



MEMPHIS, THE CITY OF THE DEAD. 59 

The city stood on the west bank of the 
Nile, a few miles above the present apex of 
the delta, near Cairo, which has been built 
of materials taken from its ruins. Except 
the cemetery, scarcely a trace of the old me- 
tropolis remains. The Necropolis lay on the 
west of the city, separated from it by an ar- 
tificial lake. Every Egyptian corpse must 
be carried for burial westward toward the 
great desert of Amenti, the abode of spirits, 
and must be carried over water. Where the 
Nile did not flow between a city and its cem- 
etery an artificial lake was made. In this 
custom the classic myth of the Acherusian 
Lake originated. 

The ground plan of the Memphian Necrop- 
olis suggests a huge dumb-bell, extending 
from north to south twenty miles, with an 
average breadth of two, the handle nearly as 
thick as the lobes, and bounded on the east 
by the Acherusian Lake, on the west by the 
desert. It was laid out in streets lined with 
tombs. Most of the tombs were one-storied 
houses of stone or marble, containing one or 
two apartments, which were decorated with 
mural paintings and sculptures, and furnished 
with all possible appliances of luxury and 
comfort. Even dolls for the dead little chil- 



60 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



dren were not forgotten. Beneath these cham- 
bers the mummies were laid in subterranean 
vaults, while the superior chambers were in- 
tended for the use of the disembodied spirits, 
and were much frequented by friends who 
sought in them communion with the de- 
parted. Only the rich were thus interred. 
The bodies of the poor were dipped in a chem- 
ical wash to retard decay, and thrust into the 
desert sand west of the City of the Dead. 

The north lobe of the dumb-bell, lifted 
upon a ridge of limestone, is occupied by the 
great pyramids. It was approached from 
the east by a paved causeway, which termi- 
nated between the paws of the oldest and 
grandest idol in the world, the great Sphinx 
of the Nile. The fore-paws of the idol are 
of masonry ; the rest of the figure is sculp- 
tured from the native rock. The lion's body, 
172 feet in length, the woman's breasts, the 
man's face, still remain. Once a granite 
temple appeared between the fore limbs, shel- 
tered in the bosom, and incense ascended 
day and night to the nostrils sixty feet 
above the altar. Upon the brows, which 
were a hundred feet in circumference, rested 
the royal helmet of Egypt, and from the chin 
drooped the royal beard. This emblem of 



MEMPHIS, THE CITY OF THE DEAD. 61 

eternity, rising from the margin of the des- 
ert to watch the Nile, guarded the northern 
entrance of the City of the Dead. Behind 
it the three great pyramids stood among a 
group of smaller ones like mountains among 
hills. One of them was red, one gray, the 
largest white. From a base which covered 
thirteen acres, a mass of solid stone rose to 
an apex 470 feet in air. Its sides were 
faced with slabs of pure white limestone 
polished, and so deftly joined that a sheet of 
paper could not be inserted between them. 
The structure represented the labor of seven 
million men. 

To the south of this place of pyramids, 
in the handle of the dumb-bell, stood the 
temple of Serapis. It was the most unique 
edifice in Egypt, and may have suggested 
the catacombs at Rome. 

During its lifetime the sacred bull was 
kept among the living in a temple on the 
east of the Acherusian Lake and worshiped 
as Apis. If it died before it was twenty- 
five years old, 1 it became Serapis. The body 
was embalmed, and lay in state for eighty 

1 Since M. Mariette found two of these bovine muni- 
mies which had lived twenty-six years, this qualification 
has seemed doubtful. 



62 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



days, which the whole land passed in mourn- 
ing. Then it was transported with imposing 
ceremonies, in which the king was prominent, 
across the lake for interment in the Sera- 
peum. That portion of the temple which 
stood above ground has vanished, and its ap- 
pearance can only be conjectured. But the 
important parts of the structure were subter- 
ranean and still remain. These are vast 
galleries hewn in the solid rock and open- 
ing at intervals of about fifty yards into high 
arched vaults. Each vault contains a huge 
sarcophagus of black polished marble cut 
from a single block, and so large that Dean 
Stanley says they seem more like chambers 
than coffins. M. Mariette has recently dis- 
covered another of these rock-hewn galleries 
two thousand feet long, lined on both sides 
with chambers occupied by similar sarcoph- 
agi. Each of these marble coffins con- 
tained the mummy of an Apis, and here 
from immemorial time until after the Chris- 
tian era the sacred bulls were buried. 

South from the Serapeum a second cluster 
of pyramids, inferior in size to the first but 
probably much older, marks the south lobe 
of the dumb-bell. 

Excepting the Sphinx, the pyramids, and 



MEMPHIS, THE CITY OF THE DEAD. 63 



the subterranean galleries of the Serapeum, 
this once magnificent Necropolis is now a 
chaos of sand heaps and shreds of mummy 
cloth, and fragments of stone, glass, pottery, 
for every foot of the space has been dug up 
many times by those destructive ragpickers 
of the East, Arabs searching for treasure. 

On the edge of the depression once filled 
by the Acherusian Lake, a colossus of red 
granite, cut from a single block and weigh- 
ing four hundred tons, lies half buried in the 
sand. The features are still distinct. The 
brows are broad, the forehead fine, the nose 
slightly aquiline. It is a handsome face of 
pure Caucasian type, and is an authentic 
portrait of the king " who knew not Joseph," 
and whose task-masters compelled the chil- 
dren of Israel to render the full tale of 
bricks when the supply of straw was refused 
them. The name of Ramses II. is inscribed 
upon the girdle. The same face is repeated 
upon the temple walls of upper Egypt ; in 
the colossi which line the approach to the 
Temple of Thebes, and in the report of the 
Egypt Exploration Fund for 1883-84, M. 
Petrie describes a statue of the same king, 
fragments of which have been found at 
Tanis, the ancient Zoan, and which he esti- 



64 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



mates to have been ninety feet in height and 
in weight nine hundred tons. For a con- 
siderable period the chief industry of Egypt 
appears to have been the manufacture of pic- 
tures and statues of this king. Our Bibles 
tell us that when the children of Israel asked 
for mercy their oppressors replied : " Ye 
are idle ! ye are idle ! Therefore ye say let 
us go ! " A sepulchral fresco earlier than 
Ramses II. shows in colors which are still 
vivid an overseer among slaves in a brick- 
yard holding a whip and saying, in words 
inscribed beneath : " The rod is in my hand, 
be not idle ! Be not idle ! " 

We may pause to note a few of many 
illuminations which Egyptologists have cast 
upon the Scriptures. It puzzles children to 
understand why all the kings of Egypt had 
the same name, until they are told that 
Pharaoh was the royal title and meant 
" Great House," as " Sublime Porte " or 
" great gate " is the title of Turkish mon- 
archs. Older people have wondered to hear 
Joseph say that God had made him " a fa- 
ther to Pharaoh," and been relieved to learn 
that the Hebrew word for father was identi- 
cal in sound with the Egyptian word for 
" prime-minister." And scholars were grati- 



MEMPHIS, THE CITY OF THE DEAD. 65 

fied when Dr. Brugsch proved that the unin- 
telligible name given to Joseph by Pharaoh, 
Zaphnath-paaneah, which had so long glared 
at them in Genesis xli. 45, was the title of 
the governor of the district over which Jo- 
seph ruled, and signified " the ruler of the 
district where dwells the Living One," that 
is, " the home of Jehovah." M. Naville has 
proved that the district called by that name 
was the Goshen assigned to the Israelites, 
and we read in Exodus that God revealed 
himself to Moses by his new name, " the Liv- 
ing One." 

The mummy of Ramses II., the Pharaoh 
of the oppression, has been found and iden- 
tified by Prof. Maspero. The mummy of his 
favorite son, wearing a mask of gold and 
wrapped in cloths written over with repeti- 
tions of his name, has also been discovered 
in the Serapeum. No other Egyptian king 
is so well-known as Ramses II. 

Egypt produced no military genius who 
can be ranked among the world's great cap- 
tains. Thotmes III. was the ablest of her 
warriors, but Ramses II. was the most fa- 
mous. Before he was twelve years old his fa- 
ther Sethos made him associate king. Some 
have supposed that he was the Sesostris of 



66 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



Herodotus. It has been conjectured that 
the blended names of father and son, Sethos- 
Ranises, softened into Sesostramsis, Sesos- 
tris, may have given rise to the name by 
which he was known to the Greeks. 

He was the vainest of men. He multi- 
plied statues of himself beyond all count, 
and erected temples and monuments to cover 
them with his portraits and the records of 
his achievements. Never was monarch so 
well advertised. He was fortunate in having 
a poet laureate named Pentaur, the Homer 
of the Nile, to sing his praises. The most 
important composition of this bard is a poem, 
which won the prize in a national competi- 
tion, and may be called the Ramsiad for the 
same reason which has named the Odyssey. 
It is much older than the Iliad, and relates 
the exploits of Ramses in a campaign against 
the people of Khita. The poem exists on 
papyrus, and entire walls of temples at Aby- 
dos, Luknor, Karnak, and Ipsamboul are in- 
scribed with its verses, or adorned with illus- 
trations of the scenes it describes. The 
colors of the pictures are fresh and vivid. 

One shows the king in camp. The camp 
is a square, intrenched with a foss and an 
embankment along which the shields of the 



MEMPHIS, THE CITY OF THE DEAD. 67 

soldiers are placed in line for a breastwork. 
In the centre, beside a movable shrine of 
the deity, is the king, and at his feet crouches 
his favorite lion, named " Smarkaftor," or 
" The Destroyer/' An inscription explains 
that this is the camp of the legion, named 
"The Bestower of Victory upon Ramses 
Miamun." It was probably his body-guard. 

A second picture represents two foreign- 
ers dragged in chains before the king. 
Egyptians are beating and pushing them 
forw r ard. The inscription reads : " This is 
the arrival of two spies of the people of 
Khita. They are beating them to make 
them tell where the king of Khita is." 

Who were the people of Khita ? A very 
few years ago the question could not have 
been answered. 

When astronomers noticed that the plan- 
ets appeared to disobey the laws of gravity, 
they began to search for the cause of the dis- 
turbance and discovered a new star. A 
similar experience led to the discovery of the 
people of Khita. 

When ancient history began to be critically 
studied, the known forces appeared inade- 
quate to account for all the phenomena 
which came to view. The vast armaments 



68 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



of Egypt and Assyria were seen to have re- 
ceived checks from some unknown source or 
sources. It had been long observed that the 
Bible speaks of the Hittites in a way which 
seems inappropriate to a tribe so small and 
weak as that people were supposed to have 
been. There was also a vivid Greek tradi- 
tion of warrior women called Amazons, who 
had lived somewhere in the east of Asia 
Minor. The excavations of Dr. Schliemann 
brought to light obvious traces of an artistic 
influence which could not be adequately ex- 
plained by reference to any source previ- 
ously known, but which must also have come 
from eastern Asia Minor. Further still, 
certain rock sculptures had been observed 
from very early times in the region to which 
these several indications pointed. The 
Greeks had attributed them to the Egyp- 
tians, for the Greeks habitually referred to 
the Egyptians all great works which they 
could not claim as their own. 

The best known of these sculptures was 
that of a colossal warrior carved in relief 
upon the face of a cliff near Sardes. Herod- 
otus saw it, and said it was carved by 
Sesostris. For twenty-four centuries the 
statement passed unquestioned. But as 



MEMPHIS, THE CITY OF THE DEAD. 69 

scholars grew critical they began to wonder 
why these figures on the rocks of Asia 
Minor wore boots with pointed toes such as 
were never seen in Egypt, but precisely 
similar to those still used by the moun- 
taineers of the Taurus, and resembling those 
which appear upon the feet of Xerxes in 
the sculptured relief of that monarch as he 
sat at Susa. Neither the costumes nor the 
faces of these mysterious figures are Egyp- 
tian. Fifty miles east of the Halys a bas- 
relief was found which represents a proces- 
sion of male and female figures. The male 
figures wear Phrygian caps, but the female 
mural crowns. The inscriptions accompa- 
nying these sculptures are cut in relief, 
while Egyptians almost invariably cut in 
intaglio. More than sixty such inscriptions 
have come to light, and though they have not 
yet been deciphered, they are obviously 
neither Egyptian nor Assyrian, nor Hebrew 
nor Greek, nor any other language known to 
living scholars. Similar inscriptions were 
found at Carchemish on the Euphrates. 

The great Egyptian picture at Ipsam- 
boul contains 1,100 figures. It represents a 
battle between Ramses II. and the king of 
Khita. The people of Khita depicted in it 



70 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



are in face and costume precisely like those 
sculptured upon the rocks of Asia Minor. 
Eventually a bilingual inscription in cunei- 
form and the unknown tongue was fortu- 
nately found, which confirmed the growing 
suspicions and completed the proof that there 
had been in eastern Asia Minor a powerful 
nation contemporary with the great mon- 
archies of Egypt and Assyria and able to 
cope with them on equal terms. The exist- 
ence of this people had not been suspected. 
One of their capitals was Carchemish on 
the Euphrates, the other Kadesh on the Oron- 
tes. They worshiped Istar, the Babylonian 
Bellona. She was served by women. Ka- 
desh — the same root as Cadiz — implies 
the abode of " Holy women," and her priest- 
esses armed and marching first in proces- 
sions gave rise to the Greek tradition of the 
Amazons. Defeated by Sargon at Carche- 
mish B. C. 717, this nation vanished from 
history so completely that a few years ago no 
man suspected that it had existed. Scholars 
are waiting for new discoveries to teach them 
more of this mysterious race. They must 
have been to some extent a literary people, 
for the Bible tells us they had founded in 
the south of Palestine, " Kirjiath-Sepher," 



MEMPHIS, THE CITY OF TEE DEAD, 71 



or "Book-town," and dwelt there in the time 
of Joshua, and their inscriptions are finely- 
cut. 

It was against this people — the Hittites 
or children of Heth, whose daughters were 
detested by Rebecca and loved by Solomon, 
from whose sons Abraham purchased his 
burial-place and David stole a wife, by mur- 
dering her husband — that Ramses II. waged 
the war described in Pentaur's poem. 

The descriptions of the Egyptian poet 
read as if they had been written by Homer 
in his dotage. Ramses is made to relate 
his own achievements. The crisis of the 
narrative appears when the king had fallen 
into an ambush, and been separated from his 
army. " Then," exclaims the modest hero, 
" 1 became like the God Menu. I hurled 
the dart with my right hand. I fought 
with my left hand. I was like Baal to 
their sight. I had come upon 2,500 pairs of 
horses. I was in the midst of them, but 
they were dashed in pieces before my steeds. 
Their courage sank, their limbs gave way ; 
they could not hurl the dart ; they could not 
w r ield the spear." The boaster proceeds to 
tell how he drove his favorite war-horse 
named " Victory for Thebes," dashing hither 



72 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



and thither at will ; seizing iron-clad heroes 
in his hands and hurling them into the- 
Orontes. It is not difficult to see why Pen- 
taur's poem won the prize. Although Kam- 
ses's victory is represented as complete, it 
appears that he carried home no spoils, and 
was glad to conclude a peace with the king 
of Khita. The terms of the treaty, first in- 
scribed upon a silver disk, are repeated upon 
the temple walls at Karnak, and have been 
translated into English. Eamses married 
afterwards a daughter of the Hittite king, 
and it is possible that she was the mother of 
the princess who educated Moses. 

The later wars of Eamses were only or- 
ganized man - hunts, prosecuted to secure 
slaves for the great works he executed. 
Among those works were temples at Luxor, 
Ipsamboul, and Memphis, and most signifi- 
cant of them all to us, the treasure cities to 
construct which the Hebrews toiled. These 
were located on the east of the Nile Delta 
as fortresses to guard the Eastern Gate of 
Egypt, and as granaries for military sup- 
plies. The site of Ramses (Exodus i. 11) is 
still uncertain. That of Pithom has been 
fixed by the excavations of M. Xaville as 
TeU el Maskutah, or " The Mound of the 



MEMPHIS, THE CITY OF THE DEAD. 73 

Statue," so named from a monolith of red 
granite representing Ramses II. seated in an 
armchair between the two solar gods Ha 
and Turn. Enormous chambers, inclosed by 
brick v/alls six and twelve feet thick and de- 
signed for the storing of grain, have there 
been found. 

In the construction of these " treasure 
cities " the children of Israel toiled until 
oppression drove them to flight. 

In the reign of Manephta II., the son and 
successor of Eamses, a coalition of enemies 
invaded Egypt. The invasion was repelled, 
but not until it had so greatly weakened 
Egypt that the Israelites were able to effect 
their escape. 

The religion of Egypt moulded her his- 
tory. It began with a lofty conception of 
the unity of God, and its earliest literature 
expresses an ethical spirit which will at 
times bear comparison with the psalms of 
David. It ended in a polytheism the most 
extravagant and abject. It appealed solely 
to motives drawn from the hope of reward 
or the fear of punishment after death. Its 
failure seems to have led Moses to reject al- 
together appeals to the life to come while he 
emphasized with all his force the pleasures 



74 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



and the pains of the life that now is. The 
conspicuous and disastrous breakdown of 
the religion of Egypt teaches a lesson which 
was repeated with terrible distinctness in 
the history of the monks of Alexandria, that 
neither a religion of fear nor a religion of 
hope, but only the religion of love, can save 
a people from their sins. 



V. 



ALEXANDRIA, THE CITY OF THE CREED 
MAKERS. 

Founded by the greatest warrior of 
Greece, betrayed to the greatest warrior of 
Rome by the most bewitching woman of 
antiquity, and destroyed by the ablest of the 
early Saracen conquerors, Alexandria was 
for a considerable time the first city in the 
world, and then took rank as second. It 
was the gate to the chief granary of the 
Roman Empire ; the hot-bed in which mod- 
ern European literatures and sciences were 
rooted ; the intellectual workshop where were 
forged those pagan creeds which resisted 
Christianity most successfully ; the foundry 
where Judaism was melted, and remoulded 
into the last and most alluring of its many 
perverted forms, and the seminary where 
Christianity first received scientific statement 
in the dogma, which eighteen centuries have 
confirmed as the fundamental doctrine of the 
church. 



76 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



Though rarely mentioned in the Bible, the 
influence of Alexandria pervades the New 
Testament as an atmosphere, unseen but 
omnipresent. Those oracles of our faith 
were written in a language finally prepared 
to receive them not at Athens, but at Alex- 
andria, and differing from the Greek of 
Plato almost as much as the English of 
Shakespeare differs from that of Chaucer, 
The part of John's Gospel which affirms that 
" the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among 
us," is expressed in terms of the Alexandrian 
philosophy, and the version of the Old Testa- 
ment largely used by the Apostles in their 
preaching was made at Alexandria. 

The distinct allusions to Alexandria in the 
New Testament, though few, are full of in- 
terest. 

It was the home of that " certain Jew " 
who probably wrote the epistle to the He- 
brews, and whom Paul yoked w T ith himself 
in the familiar utterance, " Paul may plant, 
and Apollos water." A synagogue of Alex- 
andrians in Jerusalem had part in moving 
the Jews to stone Stephen, when Paul held 
the garments of the murderers, watched the 
face "become as the face of an angel," and 
heard the voice saying, " I see Jesus stand- 



ALEXANDRIA, CITY OF CREED MAKERS. 77 



ing at the right hand of God." A ship of 
Alexandria carried the great Apostle to die 
at Rome, and Simon of Cyrene, more to be 
envied than Simon Peter on the greatest day 
of history, came from the west of Alexan- 
dria, and must almost certainly have passed 
through the streets of that city to reach the 
road over which he bore the Master's cross. 

Mareotis was the largest of the many lit- 
tle lakes in the delta of the Nile. It was 
separated from the Mediterranean by a nar- 
row limestone ridge some five miles long, and 
one in average breadth. This belt of land 
shaped in a flattened curve, thrust its east 
and west extremities north into the sea, like 
the flukes of an anchor. Midway between 
them was a small village named Ehacotis. 
In the sea, due north of the village, nearly a 
mile from land, lay a small and nameless 
island. The sheltered water between the 
village and the island, much frequented by 
Greek and Phoenician rovers, was called 
" Pirate's Bay." Here, 332 b. c, Alexander 
the Great planned the city which his gen- 
eral and successor built. 

An enormous mole thrust from the vil- 
lage to the island completed the anchor by 
giving the arms a shank and stock. The 



78 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



two commodious harbors thus formed on the 
east and the west of the great mole were 
joined together by two broad canals spanned 
by drawbridges. On the northeast tip of 
the island a lighthouse of white stone four 
hundred feet high was erected, which ranked 
among the seven wonders of the world. It 
gave to the island its own name, Pharos or 
The Lighter. 

The modern town of Alexandria is con- 
fined to the mole. Of the ancient city the 
mole was a small part. A street two hun- 
dred feet wide ran due south, threading the 
mole from Pharos Island to Lake Mareotis. 
It was crossed at right angles by another of 
equal width, which threaded the anchor's 
arms, and was probably carried by a draw- 
bridge over the great canal connecting the 
Mediterranean in front with the lake behind 
the city. At their crossing these main streets 
swelled into an oval, adorned with flowers, 
fountains, and statues. The west fluke of 
the anchor contained the Necropolis, which 
terminated, before reaching the shank, in 
the section occupied by the Egyptian resi- 
dents, and retained the name of the original 
village, Ehacotis. East of Ehacotis lay the 
royal quarter occupied by Greeks and called 



ALEXANDRIA, CITY OF CREED MAKERS. 79 

Brncheum. The east fluke of the anchor 
was inhabited by the Jewish residents, who 
numbered at the accession of Nero more 
than fifty thousand. The population of the 
city in the days of its grandeur was about 
600,000, half of them slaves. 

The first Ptolemy, probably a half brother 
of Alexander the Great, was one of the 
ablest sovereigns who have ever lived. He 
realized that mind is the master force, and 
relied on intellect to make Alexandria great. 
He strove to win without wasting what his 
predecessors -had wasted without winning, 
and succeeded so well that the surname given 
him by the Ehodians in gratitude for the as- 
sistance he rendered them was generally ac- 
cepted as descriptive of his character, and he 
was called Ptolemy the Saviour. His son 
and successor, named Ptolemy Philadelphus 
either in irony because he murdered two of 
his brothers, or to emphasize the fact that 
in contempt of Greek and compliance with 
Egyptian manners he married his sister, 
continued his father's plans with an almost 
equal ability. 

The native Egyptians were stupid and 
superstitious. To secure their loyalty the 
first Ptolemy erected, within their quarter 



80 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



Rhacotis, nearly the most magnificent temple 
of its period, scarcely inferior to that of 
Jupiter in the Capitol, and called it the Sera- 
peuin. If vre may trust Arab tradition, a 
solitary relic of its splendor still remains 
overlooking the site of the ancient city from 
an artificial mound to which it was removed 
by Diocletian. It has been called Poinpey's 
Pillar, from a mistake in deciphering the in- 
scription, though Pompey had no connection 
with it and did nothing memorable in Alex- 
andria but die. The fluted shaft of polished 
red granite, with Corinthian base and capi- 
tal, rising more than ninety-two feet, is said 
by Arab tradition to be one of the four hun- 
dred stately columns which adorned the 
Serapeum. Though the great temple re- 
sembled the Serapeum of Memphis only in 
name, the native priests were bribed to de- 
clare that all was as it should be, and the 
Egyptians were easily persuaded. To at- 
tract a still larger constituency the attributes 
of all the most popular idols in the world 
were gradually assigned to Serapis, and here 
originated that system of idolatry which, 
blending various forms of pagan worship 
into one. reached its consummation in the 
Pantheon. 



ALEXANDRIA, CITY OF CREED MAKERS. 81 

There was also a superb library attached 
to the Serapeum for those who cared to read, 
and to flatter native patriotism a priest 
named Manetho was set to recording the 
glories of Egyptian history. 

Directly east of Khacotis lay the Greek 
quarter, called Brucheum. Here stood the 
palace of the Ptolemies, and later of the 
Caesars. Near the shore of the east harbor, 
to decorate the imperial gardens, or possibly 
to commemorate the spot where, in a golden 
coffin, Alexander's body, brought from Mem- 
phis, had been buried, Augustus placed the 
two obelisks known as Cleopatra's needles, 
which originally formed parts of the temple 
at Heliopolis, where the father-in-law of Jo- 
seph once ministered as priest. One of them 
now stands on the Thames embankment, the 
other in Central Park. 

The most celebrated structure in the Bru- 
cheum or in Alexandria was the Museum. 

Educated Greeks had ceased to reverence 
the gods of Olympus. Literature, science, 
and philosophy had taken the place of re- 
ligion. But the Greeks were still the world's 
mind, and to win them was to rule the 
world, not by authority, but by influence. 
Aware of this, the Ptolemies founded and 



82 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



fostered " The Museum." It was an im- 
mense university, lavishly furnished with all 
that could attract intellectual men. It con- 
tained museums of natural history, botani- 
cal and zoological gardens, observatories, 
lecture halls, and a library which has had 
no peer until very recent times. Neither 
cost nor labor was spared to make this in- 
stitution the thought-centre of the world. 
When originals could not be obtained, cop- 
ies were procured of all known literary pro- 
ductions. To the zeal of the Ptolemies we 
are chiefly indebted for the preservation of 
so much Greek literature as has come down 
to us. 

Fearful that Pergamus — which had been 
raised to eminence by another of Alexan- 
der's generals — might become a successful 
literary rival of Alexandria, a Ptolemy pro- 
hibited the exportation from Egypt of papy- 
rus, the paper of the old world. In self-de- 
fense the Pergamites invented a preparation 
of sheepskin, suitable for writing, which 
was called after them, pergamite, or as 
gradually softened in pronunciation, parch- 
ment, and the words paper and parchment 
still preserve the history of this ancient strife 
for literary precedence. 



ALEXANDRIA, CITY OF CREED MAKERS. 83 

To the Museum Ptolemy drew Euclid, 
who laid the basis of modern mathematics. 
It was he who, when asked by the king to 
make his geometry easier, replied that there 
was no royal road to learning. Here Ar- 
chimedes, the father of modern mechanics, 
was educated. Here, too, Eratosthenes, who 
measured the obliquity of the ecliptic and 
estimated the circumference of the earth at 
31,000 miles, pursued his studies. Here, 
too, Hipparchus correctly calculated the pre- 
cession of the equinoxes, and originated the 
system developed in a later age by the as- 
tronomer after whom it was named the 
Ptolemaic, which, Mr. Kingsley says, though 
false in one assumption, was right in its 
method, and therefore served so long and 
so well. 

Continuously, poets, artists, philosophers, 
and men of science, united in making the 
court of the Ptolemies the intellectual cen- 
tre of the world. Alexandria absorbed the 
intellectual activity of her age, and became 
first, with scarcely a second. She originated 
almost nothing, except in mathematics, and 
even in that department discovered little 
which, though perhaps it had been forgot- 
ten, had not been elsewhere known before 



84 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



her day. But the gold of literature and 
science mined in earlier ages was carried to 
Alexandria, and there minted into current 
coin. 

East of the Brucheum lay the Jewish quar- 
ter. In no single point of their administra- 
tion did the two first Ptolemies display a 
keener statesmanship than in their treatment 
of that people. The only direction whence 
invasion need be feared was the east. As- 
sailants from thence must traverse Palestine 
before reaching Egypt. Centuries had 
proved the hardihood of the Jews. Ptolemy 
Soter himself in fighting them by stealth 
bore witness to their valor. To win their 
friendship was to padlock the one un- 
guarded door of his dominions. 

Aware of this, he encouraged them to build 
a synagogue in Alexandria, flattered their 
vanity by feigning for their religion a re- 
spect he did not feel, granted them privi- 
leges they had received in no other land, 
pretended even to worship their Jehovah, 
sent for those rabbis who were scarcely will- 
ing to compass sea and land to make one 
proselyte and asked them to instruct him in 
their laws, requested them to translate their 
Scriptures into Greek for his great library, 



ALEXANDRIA, CITY OF CREED MAKERS. 85 



and so allured them in large numbers to his 
capital. The translation of the Old Testa- 
ment, executed under the Ptolemies, is 
known as the Septuagint. It was the first 
ever made into a Gentile tongue, and was 
the version used by the great majority of 
readers in the time of Christ, when Hebrew 
had become a dead language even in Pales- 
tine. It is the version from which the Apos- 
tles frequently quote, and was the version 
used by the early Christians as the basis of 
other translations. 

Ptolemy himself cared little for religion 
of any kind, but the skill with which he 
weaved the religious sentiments of others 
into the fabric of his own designs has never 
been surpassed, and rarely equaled. Por 
two centuries Alexandria, under the Ptole- 
mies, continued the most brilliant and in- 
fluential city of the period. But the char- 
acters of her rulers steadily deteriorated. 
The last king of the illustrious dynasty, 
called in derision " The Flutist," deserved 
and received the contempt of his subjects. 
They refused to recognize the sovereignty 
of the daughter to whom, with her brother, 
he bequeathed his throne. 

That daughter, Cleopatra, must be counted 



86 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



one of the most fascinating women who has 
ever lived. Destitute of heart and destitute 
of eonseienee ; with no weapons but her 
beauty, her wit, and the marvelous melody 
of a voice which spoke seven languages, each 
as a mother tongue, three times she matched 
her single strength against the most powerful 
men in the world. Twice she conquered, once 
she failed ; and when that Caesar Augustus 
from whom, Luke informs us, a decree went 
forth " that all the world should be taxed," 
effectually resisted her enchantments, sur- 
prise and indignation drove her to suicide. 
It is worth noting that the Caesar whose 
government in Egypt protected the mother 
of Christ was the Caesar whose fidelity to 
duty caused Cleopatra's death. 

When scarcely eighteen, driven from her 
throne, at peril of her life she entered by a 
stratagem the private apartments of Julius 
Caesar, who had come to Alexandria to be 
her judge. Mr. Froude counts Julius Caesar 
the strongest man known to history. Cleo- 
patra, in a single interview, bound the strong 
man, and held him in her fascinations until 
the dagger of Brutus ended at once his bond- 
age and his life. 

After Caesar's death Mark Antony was 



ALEXANDRIA, CITY OF CREED MAKERS. 87 



for a time the most powerful man in the 
world. Possibly angry with the dark-eyed 
queen, but more probably haunted by the 
recollection of her beauty and wishing to 
gaze on it again, he summoned her before 
him to answer the charge of having failed to 
use her influence against Caesar's murderers. 
She came to him ; not as a culprit ; not as a 
suppliant ; but as Venus Victrix. Gliding 
over the waters of the Cydnus in a gilded 
barge propelled by purple sails and oars of 
silver which kept time to the music of flutes : 
reclining beneath a golden canopy, with 
lovely children as cupids clustering around 
her, while fair women draped as graces han- 
dled the ropes and scattered perfumes in the 
air, she entered the public square of Tarsus, 
smiled in the face of the mighty warrior 
who had summoned her before him, and 
took him a willing captive with her jew- 
eled hand. Thenceforth the great Trium- 
vir followed her as an ox that is led to 
the slaughter, until in Alexandria he per- 
ished at her feet, having flung away a world 
for the kisses of the sorceress. 

Cleopatra had made the court life of 
Alexandria a continuous revel of unspeak- 
able debaucheries. The idolatries and su- 



88 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



perstitions of the whole world had in- 
trenched themselves in the Serapeum. The 
philosophic culture of the Brucheum, severed 
from the court, was fast developing into 
systems similar to the Mesmerisms and 
Spiritisms of modern times. The Jews of 
Alexandria, flattered into a fierce and im- 
moral conceit, had already helped to inocu- 
late J erusalem with the spirit which cruci- 
fied Christ, when a new element, Chris- 
tianity, entered the city. The Jews, the 
philosophic Greeks, the idolaters, and the 
court agreed in one respect. Each party 
despised and detested the others with equal 
intensity. Neither faction was destitute of 
good men. But their numbers were few. 
The immense majority w T as composed of 
fierce fanatics and sumptuous debauchees. 
The city became a hot-bed of riots. It was 
moving surely toward that condition which 
made it possible for the quarrel of a soldier 
and a townsman about a pair of shoes to in- 
augurate a conflict in which for tw r elve years 
the city was divided into three hostile camps, 
each protected by military fortifications from 
the other two, and making war upon them 
as it could. Alexandria had already become 
a witches' cauldron, where conflicting super- 



ALEXANDRIA, CITY OF CREED MAKERS. 89 

stitions, creeds, and passions, stirred by the 
infernal powers, were boiling fiercely, when 
Christianity was cast into the hell-broth. 
It excited a still more furious strife. For 
some centuries Alexandria was a chief bat- 
tle ground of the Church with the pagan 
world. During that period some of the best 
and wisest men known to Christian biogra- 
phy lived and worked there. Pantaenus, 
Origen, Athanasius, deserve to rank almost 
with the Apostles. Their influence has 
come down the ages in perpetual benedic- 
tion. But the mass of Christians in Alex- 
andria were very ignorant and very super- 
stitious. Goaded by persecution, and still 
more by the idolatries and debaucheries con- 
tinually before their eyes, they assumed a 
fanaticism fiercer than that of pagan or 
Jew. But while recalling the sad facts we 
ought not to forget that the passion dis- 
played by the monks in Alexandria was in 
a real sense and great degree a passion for 
righteousness. A passion provoked in part, 
it is true, by the persecutions they had en- 
dured, but still more by the sight of such 
orgies of sin as can scarcely in our day be 
conceived, — orgies in which a Roman sena- 
tor in the theatre, painted as a sea god, had 



90 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



danced naked before the people, and crawled 
about the stage dragging a scaly tail, to imi- 
tate the dragons of mythology. It should 
not be forgotten that the fierce fanaticism of 
the Egyptian ascetics, like that of Crom- 
well's soldiers, was rarely used to win either 
profit or pleasure for themselves. Of those 
who defiled Alexandria with deeds which 
may perhaps be palliated, though they can- 
not be excused, some spent their nights in 
vigils and their days in fastings, and per- 
petrated cruelties in the name of Christ be- 
cause they believed that only so could they 
keep their souls from being tortured in the 
fires of hell forever. 

When the Emperor Theodosius issued 
the decree prohibiting idolatry throughout 
the Roman Empire, the archbishop of Alex- 
andria welcomed his opportunity. That 
archbishop, Theophilus, was a fierce, bold, 
and cruel man. Alexandria was a magazine 
of gunpowder. Hints of suppressing the 
worship of Serapis were sparks. Theophi- 
lus took pains to scatter them. The pagans 
flew to arms. They intrenched themselves 
in the Serapeum. The Christians hastened 
to attack it. The temple was besieged. 
Prisoners taken in sallies by the idolaters 



ALEXANDRIA, CITY OF CREED MAKERS. 91 

were inhumanly tortured and immolated 
before the altars by its defenders. The 
streets of Rhacotis ran blood. 

A truce was at last arranged until the 
Emperor's will could be learned. Each 
party expected a favorable reply from Theo- 
dosius, when they met on the public square 
to hear the message from Rome. The 
Christians raised a shout of triumph, for it 
decreed the destruction of the Serapeum. 
The idolaters fled and sought safety in con- 
cealment. 

The Christians rushed upon the temple 
and began its demolition unresisted. But 
they paused in their ruthless work before 
the statue of Serapis. It was a colossal 
seated image, embodying the attributes of 
the most venerated deities of both Egypt 
and Greece. Its extended hands touched 
both walls of the sanctuary. It was made 
of plates of various metals inlaid with pre- 
cious stones. The symbol of plenty, a golden 
basket, rested upon its head ; a serpent, the 
emblem of eternity, coiled around its body 
and a three-headed cerberus crouched by its 
side. Many supposed it had been wor- 
shiped by the great Sesostris. The pagans 
believed that if this idol were overthrown the 



92 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



earth would open and swallow the city, or the 
sea rise and overwhelm it. The Christians 
were not free from similar apprehensions. 
They paused before the image in anxious 
suspense. In vain Theophilus strove by 
mocking taunts to urge them forward. A 
solitary Roman soldier, bearing a ladder and 
a battle-axe, advanced into the open space 
which superstitious fears had kept, inviolate. 
No one ventured to assist him. As he laid 
the ladder upon the idol's shoulder and as- 
cended its rounds, the Christians were spell- 
bound by an awe they could not master. 
That soldier deserves to rank among the 
bravest of men. With all his force he 
struck his battle-axe into the idol's cheek. 
The golden plate fell crashing upon the 
stone pavement. That clang rang the loud- 
est death-knell of idolatry in the Empire. 
The earth did not open, the sea did not rise. 
Frenzy again seized the Christians. Be- 
neath repeated strokes the image fell. Awe 
swiftly changed to ridicule as a colony of 
mice, which had been sheltered in its body, 
appeared, scampering in terror away from 
their divine protector. 

The Christians continued the work of de- 
struction. They tore in fragments the pre- 



ALEXANDRIA, CITY OF CREED MAKERS. 93 

cious contents of the library. They stripped 
the Serapeum of all that could be removed ; 
they destroyed all that could be destroyed ; 
and though baffled for a time by the stu- 
pendous strength of the structure, they did 
not rest until its stately columns had been 
broken, and built into a breakwater against 
the sea. 

But the murder of Hypatia, in 415 a. d., 
is the darkest stain upon the religion of Alex- 
andria. She was a heathen maiden, raised up, 
we may believe, to prove what Cleopatra had 
once made it hard to believe, that God does 
not leave Himself without a witness among 
any people. She was as true as Cleopatra 
was false, as gracious as Cleopatra was cruel, 
and though her beauty differed from that of 
Cleopatra, as a star hanging in the blue dif- 
fers from a star shot from a Eoman candle, 
perhaps she was as beautiful. Her genius 
drew crowds of honest seekers after truth to 
the museum when each day she expounded 
Plato, and strove nobly in the hopeless en- 
deavor to regenerate society without Christ. 
Christian youths attended her lectures, and 
were ennobled by them. This was enough 
to convince the monks of Cyril that she was 
a sorceress sent by the devil to allure Christ's 
lambs to hell. 



94 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



Slanders, to the effect that she had pre- 
judiced the prefect of the city against the 
archbishop, circulated among the Christians, 
increased their rage against her. 

They lay in wait for her in the street be- 
fore the Museum. They tore her from her 
chariot. They dragged her to the church, 
called Csesareum. They stripped off her 
clothing, rent her body limb from limb, cast 
the quivering flesh into the flame kindled in 
the public square, and so sent her spirit to 
tell the Master how his disciples had dealt 
with one who, in the best way she knew, was 
trying to do in Alexandria what the same 
demoniac zeal for a fiction they called God 
had crucified Him for doing in Jerusalem. 

The same sectarian spirit which had long 
before destroyed Jerusalem caused the final 
ruin of Alexandria. Six hundred and thirty- 
eight years after Christ, the Christians in 
Egypt were quarreling over a quibble of 
doctrine of which they were not able to un- 
derstand, and of which no one now need 
care to know, more than this : that one 
denomination called themselves Melchites, 
while the other called themselves Jacob- 
ites ; and the essential creed of both was to 
hate one another with all their heart and 



ALEXANDRIA, CITY OF CREED MAKERS. 95 

mind and strength. In the crisis of this 
quarrel the Saracens invaded Egypt. Their 
advance was facilitated by the treachery of 
one of the Christian factions which had been 
driven by the other from Alexandria, and 
hoped to gain the upper hand by help of the 
common enemy. The city resisted in a siege 
of fourteen months. The Saracens attacked 
with vigor. Amrou their great commander, 
carried beyond his lines by his own impetu- 
osity, with a single slave attending him, was 
taken prisoner. The Alexandrians did not 
recognize him. How should such drivelers 
recognize a hero ? But as he was brought 
before the Christian prefect, the dignity of 
Amrou's bearing had nearly betrayed his 
identity even to them, when his quick-witted 
slave smote him upon the mouth, and bade 
him mind his manners in the presence of his 
betters. The Christians were completely de- 
ceived. They sent their illustrious captive 
back to negotiate a peace with the general 
who was himself. Is it not the irony of his- 
tory that this city of creed-makers should 
have perished through adopting a false creed, 
not about the personality of God which they 
could not understand, but about the person 
of a man which they might easily have 
known ? 



96 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



Amrou again at the head of his army cap- 
tured the city. At first he designed to pre- 
serve it uninjured, and carefully refrained 
from pillage. Four years later, provoked by . 
the repeated attacks of the Eomans, he de- 
cided upon its destruction. Its magnificence 
devastated, its library destroyed, its defenses 
thrown down, its harbor impaired, the skele- 
ton alone remains to warn us that whenever 
we are tempted to think more of the letter, 
even of the Scriptures, than of the spirit 
which inspired them, we may read with 
profit a chapter from the history of Alexan- 
dria. 



VI. 



PETRA, THE CITY OF SHAMS. 

The deep and dreary valley extending 
south a hundred and twenty miles from the 
Dead Sea to the eastern arm of the Eed 
Sea was named from its extreme desolation 
" The Arabah," or " Waste." It is separated 
from the Arabian desert on the east by a 
belt of mountain twenty miles in average 
breadth. These mountains of porphyry 
capped with sandstone form a region of sharp 
needles, abrupt precipices, and wild gorges, 
threaded with fertile valleys and dotted with 
nests of rich ground. Westward it faces the 
Arabah valley in cliffs and rugged ascents, 
divided by savage chasms. Eastward it 
slopes more gently in striations of alternat- 
ing ridge and hollow, and, though higher, 
the mountains are less barren as they drop 
downward toward the desert. Lofty peaks, 
attracting vapors from the Mediterranean 
Sea and the Indian Ocean, distribute a rain- 
fall sufficient to create fertility wherever 







98 ANCIENT CITIES. 

there is soil. The desert heat, tempered by 
the elevation and abundant moisture, ren- 
ders the climate delightful. 

This rugged territory is Mount Seir. 
By the Old Testament writers it was also 
called Edom, by the Greeks Idurasea. Petra 
was from immemorial time its most impor- 
tant city, though not continuously its capi- 
tal. Petra is the Greek translation of the 
earlier name " Selah," the " Kock," and the 
rocky region lying east of the Arabah was 
in that tongue called Arabia Petraea, not be- 
cause it was rocky, but because its capital 
was Petra. 

Near the close of the last century the 
French traveler Volney, while encamped 
near Jericho, heard reports of remarkable 
ruins somewhere in the mountains of Idu- 
msea. Fear of hostile Arabs deterred him 
from attempting to discover them. In 1812 
Burckhardt, the Columbus of modern Ori- 
ental travel, undertook the task. He was 
master of the Arabic language, and familiar 
with Arabian manners. He wore the rags 
which constitute the average Bedouin toilet, 
and easily passed for one of the faithful 
upon a pilgrimage to Mecca. He gave out 
that a vow required him to sacrifice a goat 



PETRA, THE CITY OF SHAMS. 99 

at some sacred spot in the region he wished 
to explore, and the superstition of the na- 
tives guarantied his safety. Striking into 
the mountains a little south of the Dead 
Sea, he moved southeast by south some sixty 
miles, and entered a small valley near the 
edge of the desert. A stream crossed the 
valley and vanished in the wall of rock 
which rimmed the place on all sides but the 
east. Rounding a bulge in the precipice the 
traveler discerned a fissure cleaving it from 
base to summit. The Arabs called it the 
Sik or Cleft, and said it had been made by 
the rod of Moses. Into this fissure Burck- 
hardt followed the stream. The chasm was 
scarcely more than twelve feet wide, and its 
walls were perpendicular. The stream had 
obviously been once confined within an arti- 
ficial channel. A roadway broad enough for 
camels was paved with blocks of stone. 
There was sufficient earth to fringe with 
scarlet oleanders the path which sloped 
evenly downward. The fissure varied in 
width, as he advanced, from twelve to forty 
feet. Ferns grew from crevices in the walls. 
Trailing creepers hung festoons upon them. 
A bridge spanned the chasm near its en- 
trance. A second glance showed it to be a 



100 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



triumphal arch. Beneath it niches cut for 
statues and framed between ornamental pi- 
lasters gave a weird effect to the deserted 
gallery. The traveler had advanced a mile 
along what seemed the enchanted entrance 
to some fairy land, when the chasm broad- 
ened and debouched into another running 
nearly at right angles to its course. It was 
morning and the open space was flooded 
with sunlight. Directly before him, hewn 
in the face of the cliff, stood a temple. Its 
Corinthian columns, richly ornamented, sup- 
ported a pediment on which appeared a co- 
lossal stone eagle as if about to fly forth. 
The entrance beneath was guarded by eques- 
trian sculptures, and above the portico, 
flanked by columnar towers resembling 
mimic temples, an "insulated cylinder" sup- 
ported an enormous urn, which the Arabs 
said was filled with treasures placed there 
by Egyptian kings. The whole amazing 
structure glowed deep rose - color in the 
morning light, and the sunbeams reflected 
from behind the columns of the portico 
gave to parts of it the pink of an ocean 
shell. From the urn, conspicuous above all 
other parts of the temple, it is called the 
Khazne or Treasury. 



PETEA, TEE CITY OF SHAMS. 101 

I have called this structure a temple, and 
such from without it appears to be. The 
interior, a few paltry apartments twenty and 
thirty feet square, mocks such pretensions. 

From this place of enchantment the gorge 
elbows sharply to the northwest, narrowing 
immediately to its former dimensions, and 
continues for a mile impressive as before. 
Then the right wall continuing straight on, 
the left wall bending backward, the fissure 
expands into an undulating plain several 
miles in circumference, inclosed on the east 
and west between precipices from three 
hundred to one thousand feet high, and shut 
in north and south by rugged sandstone 
mountains. 

At the left hand of the gorge, at the point 
where it debouches into the open inclosure, 
stands a theatre, cut in the rock. The tiers, 
thirty-five in number, face from the plain. 
" Boxes " cut in the mountain open upon 
the broad corridor which circles behind and 
above the highest tier. The theatre will seat 
thirty-five hundred spectators, and is in such 
perfect preservation, says Stevens, " that if 
the bodies buried in the adjacent cliffs could 
come to life they might take their old places 
and listen to the declamations of their favor- 
ite players." 



102 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



Here we will take our seat near by the 
city. On our right the precipice continues 
northward, nearly sl mile. Its face is honey- 
combed with dwellings or tombs. Which to 
call them no man knows. Some of them 
are plain, some are adorned with facades 
like Grecian temples. They open upon dif- 
ferent levels, and must have been reached 
by approaches cut in the face of the rock. 
Opposite this wall of cliff, west across the 
plain, another like it shows the same surpris- 
ing cuttings. The mountains which bound 
the plain upon the north are also filled with 
them. The south boundary slopes upward 
in more gradual ascents. 

The stream along which Burckhardt en- 
tered bisects the plain from east to west, and 
disappears in a chasm which has not been 
explored. The city of Petra stood upon the 
plain on both sides of the stream. The site 
is covered with ruins, among which a Roman 
arch of triumph and a citadel are still dis- 
tinct. The purpose of the cliff cuttings 
which surround the city and fill the sides of 
gorges opening into it is not known. They 
are innumerable and represent incredible la- 
bor. Some think that they were tombs, some 
that they were dwellings ; others that they 



PETRA, THE CITY OF SHAMS. 103 



were an intermixture of both. A plausible 
theory infers that they were designed solely 
as ornaments. For a time the whole com- 
merce of the East paid tribute to Petra, and it 
has been supposed that the citizens, possessing 
enormous wealth, and unable to adorn their 
suburbs in any other way, took this means 
of gratifying their love of beauty. There is 
probably some truth in each hypothesis. The 
primitive Horites or cave-dwellers named in 
Genesis probably dwelt in the cliffs. When 
the city on the plain was founded they may 
have gradually removed to it, and used the 
caves for sepulchres. The Idumfeans sup- 
planted the Horites. When the Nabathseans 
took possession of the place three centuries 
before Christ the age of its splendor began. 
Shut in by a wall of rock from every breeze, 
the citizens would naturally seek relief from 
the heat of summer in the surrounding ele- 
vations, where alone it could be found. In 
time the superb carvings were made to adorn 
retreats in which the rich sought for coolness 
and repose. Whatever else future explo- 
rations may disclose, one fact is certain : The 
splendor of these mysterious structures was 
wholly on the outside. Within they were 
pitiful hovels. This is among the reasons 



104 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



which justify our calling Petra the city of 
shams. 

On a summit near the city a watch-tower 
still remains. A line of similar towers has 
been traced northward nearly to Hebron. 
These watch-towers of Idumsea are most in- 
teresting to us as the objects in Isaiah's 
mind when he wrote the words rendered in 
the favorite hymn, " Watchman, tell us of 
the night." It may also be that Balaam 
stood upon such an one within the horizon 
of Bethlehem when he uttered the predic- 
tion : " I shall see Him, but not now : I shall 
behold Him, but not nigh : there shall come 
a star out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise 
out of Israel." 

Hard by Petra stands Mount Hor. It 
rises five thousand feet above the Arabah, 
in three circular terraces of sandstone, and 
marks one of the few localities in the jour- 
ney of the children of Israel about the iden- 
tity of which there is no reasonable doubt. 
For unknown reasons it has been from pre- 
historic times regarded as a sacred spot. 
At the base of this mountain Moses halted, 
after nearly forty years of wandering. He 
had asked from the king of Edom permis- 
sion to pass east around Moab through his 



PETRA, THE CITY OF SHAMS. 105 

dominions. The messengers had returned 
when Moses took Aaron, and Eleazar his 
son, and went up into the mountain in the 
sight of all the congregation. And Moses 
stripped Aaron of his priestly garments and 
put them upon Eleazar his son ; and Aaron 
died there in the top of the mountain. And 
Moses and Eleazar came down from the 
mount. And all Israel mourned thirty days 
for Aaron. 

The Idumaean king fiercely refused to al- 
low the Israelites a passage through his ter- 
ritory. They were forced to retrace their 
steps south to the Bed Sea. It was a weary 
journey, heavy with the sand driven north 
from the Gulf of Akabah. Travelers tell us 
it is infested with sand-colored snakes, small, 
but venomous, which escape notice on ac- 
count of their color. The Bible tells us that 
here the Israelites, tantalized perhaps by the 
sight of orchards and vineyards they had 
seen but not entered, began to loathe their 
simple fare. " They murmured," and " the 
Lord sent serpents among them," which bit 
them, "and thousands died." Then Moses 
lifted up before their eyes that brazen ser- 
pent, the mysterious sign of healing through- 
out the ancient world, to which the Master 



106 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



referred when He strove to make men recog- 
nize in Him the Good Physician. 

The IdumaBans were the bitterest and most 
persistent enemies Israel ever had. Family 
feuds are proverbially implacable, and Esau 
was the twin brother of J acob. The Edom- 
ites fiercely refused the reasonable request 
of Moses. When Nebuchadnezzar invaded 
Judah they rushed to his assistance. When 
Nehemiah began to build the temple they 
were there to hinder him. In describing 
the final triumph of Israel, and the destruc- 
tion of her enemies, Isaiah included all her 
foes in the one representative name of 
Edom, and pictured Jehovah returning from 
the devastation of that land, as welcomed by 
the triumphal salutation, 44 Who is this that 
cometh from Edom ! " 

More than a century and a half before 
Christ, the Idumseans, who had been driven 
from Petra north toward the southern bound- 
aries of Judah, were conquered by Judas 
Maccabaeus, the greatest warrior of Israel 
after Joshua. After the death of Judas his 
nephew John Hyrcanus offered them the al- 
ternative of death or circumcision. They 
submitted, and thus made sham Jews they 
entered into a sham reconciliation, which 



PETRA, THE CITY OF SHAMS. 107 

continued with many breaks and bickerings 
for nearly a century. 

The inevitable result of such feigned sen- 
timents appeared in the animosities which 
seethed around the throne of Herod the 
Great. 

That monarch, chiefly known to Bible 
readers by his murder of the innocents, 
hated by the Jews as a sham Jew, ridiculed 
by the Romans as a sham Roman, gibbeted 
in the question of the wise men as a sham 
king, was an Idumsean. His father had lived 
for a time at Petra, and was the intimate 
associate of the Arabian king. Herod also 
sought the alliance of the Arabians, though 
like most of his friends they became the sub- 
jects of his enmity the instant it appeared 
his interest to fight them. Though a bad, 
he was a bold man, and the campaign in 
which he won the admiration of the Romans 
shows traces of an experience gained among 
the caves of Edom. 

A few miles west of the Sea of Galilee, in 
the gorge of Magdala, was a mimic Petra, 
named Arbela. Here caves cut in the cliff 
opened into galleries hewn along its face. 
Brigands were in possession of these strong- 
holds. Amply provisioned, and supplied 



108 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



with water by cisterns sunk into the rock 
and filled by the rainfall, they resisted suc- 
cessfully even Roman skill and valor. Herod 
made iron crates, filled them with armed 
men, suspended them from the brow of the 
precipice by iron chains which could not be 
cut, and so was fought a strange battle be- 
tween men hanging in the air and men in- 
trenched in the solid rock. Herod gained 
the victory, and the bandits were extermi- 
nated. 

By force, flattery, and lies combined he 
gained the Jewish throne. To please the 
Jews he built a temple to J ehovah on Mount 
Moriah. To please the Romans he inaugu- 
rated Greek and Roman games, and built 
a theatre in Jerusalem. In spite of these 
achievements he won the contempt of the 
Romans, and the detestation of the Jews, 
When he had murdered his wife and his 
two favorite sons at the instigation of a 
third, and the third son on the slander of a 
eunuch, at seventy years of age he was 
attacked by a disorder so painful that he at- 
tempted suicide, so offensive that no atten- 
dant could endure many moments of his pres- 
ence. Foreseeing his death he summoned 
the elders of Israel to receive his last will 



PETRA, THE CITY OF SHAMS. 109 

at Jericho. There he kept them under 
strict guard in the hippodrome, and com- 
pelled his officers to swear that every man 
of them should be slain the instant he 
breathed his last, that there might be mourn- 
ing at his funeral. 

Thus perished the sham king which Petra 
helped inflict upon Israel. 1 He died six 
months after her true king had been born, 
and the joy of men over his loathsome fu- 
neral was exceeded only by the joy of angels 
over the birth of Christ. It was to men who 
for thirty-seven years had endured the op- 
pressions of a monster who may truthfully 
be called the 46 destroyer," that the heralds 
sang, " Unto you is born this day a Saviour, 
which is Christ the Lord." 

It is suggestive to remember that the 
same race which strove to check the advance 
of Moses, sent forth at last the sumptuous 
and energetic criminal who strove to murder 
in his cradle the Saviour of the world. 

1 By the alliance between Herod's father and the king 
of Petra, Antipater's " very familiar friend," by whose 
aid Antipater gained a controlling influence in Jerusa- 
lem. See Hausrath, vol. i. p. 208, Eng. trans. , and Jose- 
phus, Ant 14. 1. 4. 



VII. 



DAMASCUS, THE CITY OF SUBSTANCE. 

I could wish to lead you to Damascus 
by a route which, though partially explored, 
has not, I think, been traversed. Leaving 
the Mediterranean some few miles north of 
Tyre, and striking inland a little north of 
east across a mile or two of fertile plain, we 
reach the range called " The White Moun- 
tains," or " Lebanon." East of it sinks the 
deep, rich valley named " The Syrian Hol- 
low," or " Coele Syria." Here distracted 
little brooks rush about in a bewildered 
manner, or pause in meditative pools, as if 
trying to determine whether they ought to 
go southwest with the Leontes for the ben- 
efit of Tyre, or south, to help the Jordan 
sweeten the Dead Sea, or east, in vain at- 
tempt to reach the Barada, and aid it in giv- 
ing cups of cold water to the great thirsty 
desert. The range east of the valley is called 
" The White Mountain's Vis-a-Vis," or An- 
tilebanon. This we cross at the highest 



DAMASCUS, THE CITY OF SUBSTANCE. Ill 



point, which is named, from its dazzling 
snows, " The Glitterer," but is better known 
to us as Mount Hermon, or " The Lofty." 
Nine thousand feet of vigorous, and often 
dangerous climbing have brought us to its 
summit, three cones so ranged as to appear 
from east and west as one. Here a circle of 
huge stones, like the mysterious dolmens of 
western Europe, and the ruins of a temple 
belonging to a period comparatively recent, 
remind us that from before Abraham's day, 
until after Christ, Mount Hermon was a 
centre of Syrian sun-worship. 

It is afternoon. Southward, amid the 
roots of the mountain, the Sea of Galilee 
glitters, like a bit of glass dropped in a bed 
of flowers. Westward, the Mediterranean 
glows, a sheet of burnished gold. Eastward, 
a black shadow is stealing down the moun- 
tain. It glides over the plain ; it becomes 
the most marvelous of shadows, a slender 
cone of darkness stretching seventy miles 
across the desert, and stabbing the flushed 
sky till the sun sinks and the phantom van- 
ishes in night. The bright speck gleam- 
ing in this cone of darkness a third of the 
distance toward its apex is Damascus. Its 
appearance is symbolic of its history, for, in 



112 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



the darkness which conceals all other cities 
of equal age, Damascus alone appears, old as 
Ur and young as Boston. We have come to 
view the city from a place whence we think . 
the Master might have been seen when his 
face shone as the sun and his garments were 
white as the light. It was early morning 
then, and the shadow lay eastward upon the 
sea, while the transfigured Saviour talked 
with Moses and Elias concerning his decease, 
which he should accomplish at J erusalem. 

With solemn thoughts we descend the east 
side of the mountain. Sharp elevations shut 
us in until we reach the foot-hills and pause 
upon the spot whence the devout camel-driver 
gazed upon the city in which he now is wor- 
shiped, and exclaimed, " Man can have but 
one Paradise, and mine is above." 

Five hundred feet below us lies the plain 
of the desert. Beside us the Barada, called 
by ancient Syrians " The Eternal," by 
Greeks "The Golden River," forcing its 
way through the mountain barrier, flows 
eastward more than twenty miles, till lost in 
three diminutive lakes which lie upon the 
sand like drops of dew upon a waste of 
ashes, or as if the finger of Lazarus had 
touched the tongue of Dives. United with a 



DAMASCUS, THE CITY OF SUBSTANCE. 113 

smaller stream by an incomparable system 
of irrigation, the river is made to fertilize 
every foot of ground for more than ten miles 
from both its banks. An oasis of exquisite 
verdure, threaded with silver and musical 
with rippling waters, extends from the roots 
of the barren mountains into the burning, 
silent waste. Here grows every flower that 
is pleasant to the eye, and every fruit that is 
good for man to eat. 

44 And here are gardens bright with sinuous rills, 
Where blossoms many an incense-bearing tree, 
And here are forests, ancient as the hills, 
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery." 

Two miles from the hill on which we 
stand, and separated from it by a lawn of 
turf like England's richest ; surrounded by 
orchards of pomegranates, apricots, and ol- 
ives ; girt with a wealth of roses sufficient to 
supply the world with its most valued per- 
fume ; on the south bank of the Barada, but 
swelling across the stream in many a sunny 
suburb, the white domes and gilded minarets 
of Damascus gleam amid the foliage, or glit- 
ter above it beneath the soft Syrian sky. 
For five thousand years it has gleamed, an 
eye in the desert. It has never been a large 
city, nor a strong, nor a warlike, but rather 



114 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



one of the meek, to whom the inheritance of 
the earth is promised. Its clays have been 
chiefly spent in feeding the hungry, clothing 
the naked, and doing good to those who have 
despitefully used and persecuted it. 'When- 
ever, as has occurred three or four times in 
five millenniums, its heart has been puffed up, 
and it has tried to exercise lordship over its 
brethren, some speedy check has stripped off 
its finery and sent it back to the better busi- 
ness, which has always been resumed with 
cheerful alacrity. A humble, hopeful, 
cheerful city, it is the bright speck in the 
dee}) shadow that lies upon the ancient 
world. 

Though the oldest of cities, Damascus con- 
tains few ruins, for, like a thrifty housewife, 
it has continually made over its old garments 
into new raiment to suit the changing seasons ; 
like nature, perpetually converting its rub- 
bish into fresh forms of beauty, it has con- 
tinually renewed its youth. 

^Ve will glance at the few features of the 
place which are known to have met the eyes 
of Paul : — 

A triple arch spanning three gateways, 
and facing east and west A mile due east 
of this, its duplicate. The two united by 



DAMASCUS, THE CITY OF SUBSTANCE. 115 

four parallel lines of white marble Corin- 
thian columns. The inner colonnade of the 
three thus formed is roofed, and reserved foi' 
pedestrians. The outer two are open to the 
sky, and used by chariots. This triple col- 
onnade, a mile in length, was the " street 
called Straight." Fancy it the string of a 
bow when strung, and the south wall of the 
city, at no point distant the quarter of a mile 
from the string, will represent the bow itself. 
The north wall completed a rectangle of which 
the bowstring was the south base, and the 
sides, extending northward to the river, were 
half a mile in length. These walls existed 
before the Roman period, and their course 
is still distinctly traceable. The city proper, 
the area within the walls, was considerably 
less than four hundred acres, but the over- 
flow of suburbs varied in every age. 

In the northwest angle of the walls, and 
near the river, stands " The Castle." It oc- 
cupies one of the two sites in the ancient 
city which have been identified with cer- 
tainty. A quadrangle flanked with towers, 
it was once a place of formidable strength, 
but is now a shell thin and weak with age. 

The military recollections of Damascus 
naturally cluster around this fastness. David 



116 



ANCIENT CITIES, 



was the first recorded conqueror of the city. 
It regained its independence during the 
reign of Solomon, and though frequently 
captured and plundered in succeeding cen- 
turies by Egypt and Assyria, neither of 
those nations was able to hold it long in sub- 
jection because of the other. 

It was probably a temporary repulse of 
the Assyrians, under Shalmaneser II., by 
the Dasmascene general Naaman to which 
reference is made in 2 Kings v. 1 : " by 
him the Lord had given deliverance unto 
Syria." The statement was perplexing be- 
cause the Scripture narrative gives no hint 
of any deliverance needed at that time by 
Syria, which had long had the upper hand 
of Israel. But when the boastful inscrip- 
tions of Shalmaneser, which record his three 
campaigns against Damascus, .were deci- 
phered, they made the statement plain. It 
was from Assyria that the Lord gave Da- 
mascus deliverance by the hand of Naaman. 

" Now Naaman was a leper," and dear to 
every Christian qhild is the story of the 
" little maid brought away captive out of the 
land of Israel " who waited upon his wife, 
and said to her, " would God my lord was 
with the prophet that is in Samaria, for he 



DAMASCUS, THE CITY OF SUBSTANCE. 117 

would recover him of his leprosy," so that 
Naaman took $60,000 in gold and ten 
changes of raiment for a physician's fee, and 
was healed for nothing by Elisha. 

More than a century later Pekah, the 
usurping king of Israel, conspired with 
Rezin, king of Damascus, to capture Jerusa- 
lem, dethrone its feeble monarch Ahaz, and 
put in his place their minion, " the son of 
Tabeal." The coalition appeared irresisti- 
ble. The heart of Ahaz and the hearts of 
his people were moved " as the trees of the 
wood are moved by the wind " when it was 
told them " Syria is confederate with 
Ephraim." Isaiah, the greatest of ancient 
statesmen because the greatest of ancient 
seers, rebuked the general panic in the con- 
temptuous exhortation : " Fear not the two 
tails of these smoking fire-brands," for their 
confederacy shall not stand. In less than a 
generation, he declared, the riches of Sama- 
ria and the spoils of Damascus should be 
taken away by the king of Assyria. Then 
lifting his eyes to broader horizons the seer 
uttered the great prediction, " Unto us a child 
is born, unto us a son is given, and the gov- 
ernment shall be upon his shoulders, and his 
name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, 



118 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the 
Prince of Peace. And of the increase of 
his government there shall be no end." 

These three predictions were elicited by 
the same emergency. The first was fulfilled 
within the year. Assyrian inscriptions show 
that the second was accomplished by Tiglath- 
Pileser. If from Isaiah's race no child has 
yet been born, whom men have counted 
wonderful, whose counsel they have invoked 
in perplexity, whose aid they have sought in 
weakness, whom Christmas days have crowned 
the Prince of Peace ; if no such child has 
yet been born, Isaiah's third prediction, 
uttered seven centuries before the birth of 
Christ, still waits for its fulfillment. 

After the great conquerors of Egypt and 
Asia, each in his day, had captured and 
plundered Damascus, it was taken without 
resistance by Parmenio for Alexander the 
Great. In it Pompey spent the proudest 
year of his life, 64 b. c, distributing at his 
pleasure the thrones of the East to the vas- 
sals of Pome. Cleopatra had received the 
city as a love-gift from Mark Antony, and 
Tiberius had -bestowed it upon Herod the 
Great, before Aretas of Petra, the father of 
the princess whom Herod Antipas divorced 



DAMASCUS, THE CITY OF SUBSTANCE, 119 

for Herodias' sake, and the ruler whose offi- 
cers watched the city to prevent the escape 
of Paul, made it, we know T not how, a part 
of his dominions. 

We cannot follow the varying fortunes of 
Damascus from the age of Aretas to that of 
Heraclius. In 634 A. i>. it was captured by 
the Saracens. A generation later it was 
made their capital, and for a time remained 
at the head of an empire which extended 
from the Atlantic to beyond the Tigris. 

Some centuries later Noureddin estab- 
lished a system of communication never 
equaled before the electric telegraph, by 
which carrier pigeons flew at regular inter- 
vals from posts in his dominions, bearing 
letters beneath their wings, to their cotes in 
the gardens of Damascus. 

The body of Noureddin's successor, Sala- 
din, the only man who could match English 
Coeur de Leon in personal encounter, lies 
near the great mosque. It is he of whom 
the somewhat doubtful story is related, that 
when death drew nigh he ordered his fa- 
vorite war horse, bearing his arms and his 
shroud, to be led along the " street called 
Straight " by a herald crying, " This is all 
that remains of Saladin the Great.' 5 



120 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



One more glance at the castle in the year 
1401 A. D. shows the quadrangle filled with 
corpses. They are the corpses of its brave 
defenders. Tamerlane stands among them. 
He has received a ransom of fifty millions for 
their lives, pledged his honor for their safety, 
slaughtered them in cold blood, to a man, 
and after an indiscriminate massacre of the 
rest of her inhabitants he will reduce Da- 
mascus to ashes, and depart to build upon 
the ruins of Bagdad his pyramid of 90,000 
human heads. 

A little east of the castle stands the great 
mosque of Damascus. On the site it covers 
stood, most probably, in the age of Abra- 
ham, a temple to the sun. Here, too, it has 
been plausibly inferred, Naaman bowed by 
Elisha's permission while his master leaned 
upon him to worship Rimmon, and hence 
came the pattern of the altar which Ahaz 
copied in Jerusalem; for here, Mr. Porter 
strongly inclines to think, was the centre of 
those abominations from which, in the time 
of Paul, a majority of the women of Damas- 
cus sought shelter in Judaism. In the great 
mosque traces still remain of Christian by 
the side of Saracenic architecture. Beneath 
it the head of J ohn the Baptist was said to 



DAMASCUS, THE CITY OF SUBSTANCE. 121 

have been laid, inclosed in a golden cas- 
ket. When the Saracens took the city in 
63-i they entered simultaneously the opposite 
gates of the " street called Straight." One 
party entered by assault, the other by sur- 
render. Neither knew that the other had 
passed the barrier until they met near the 
centre of the city at St. Mary's church. The 
leader of the fighting band insisted that the 
Christians should be slain. The leader of 
the other, that his word was pledged for their 
protection. A compromise was with diffi- 
culty made. Half the church was assigned 
to the Christians, half of it to Mohammed- 
ans. For some years the building was di- 
vided by an invisible line which Christians 
might not pass, though the space it bounded 
was consecrated to the worship of Christ. 

This siege of Damascus was distinguished 
by the prowess of the Christian hero, Thom- 
as. With incomparable bravery and skill 
he defended the principal gate until wounded 
by the wife of a Saracen he had slain, who 
indued her husband's armor, and, like a 
Joan of Arc, with her own courage reani- 
mated her faltering countrymen. 

The story of the Christian lovers, Jonas 
and Eudoxia, forms the theme of a tragedy 



122 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



by Mr. Hughes, which achieved great popu- 
larity in London during the last century. 

While the lovers were attempting to es- 
cape together from the city, Jonas was capr 
tured by the Saracens. He renounced his 
faith, gained influence among his captors, 
and when by their assistance he had been 
reunited to Eudoxia, she stabbed herself to 
the heart as he clasped her in his arms. 

It was Walid, the sixth caliph of the 
Omeiyades, says Porter, who compelled the 
Christians to surrender their part of the 
cathedral of St. John, and transformed it 
into the celebrated mosque. The vast wealth 
accumulated by plunder was used to rear a 
structure of surpassing splendor. Twelve 
hundred Greeks were employed upon the 
work. Columns of polished porphyry and 
granite were brought from Alexandria. The 
niches for prayer were framed in diamonds 
and other gems set in garlands of wrought 
gold. From the roof of carved wood, in- 
laid with precious metals, hung six hundred 
lamps, each of pure gold. Though plun- 
dered many times, the great mosque is still 
perhaps the noblest edifice in eastern Asia. 

The most precious memory suggested by 
Damascus, we have not yet recalled. A 



DAMASCUS, THE CITY OF SUBSTANCE. 123 



young man of noble and sensitive spirit 
was fighting Christianity, because he verily 
thought he ought so to do. A few days be- 
fore he visited the city, he had watched the 
death of Stephen, the first and noblest of 
Christian martyrs, the man of all men known 
to history most like himself. He was hasten- 
ing to Damascus to kill others like Stephen. 
It cannot be but doubts had arisen in his 
mind. Could lies enable men to die as 
Stephen died ? To men like Paul doubt is 
torment. " Suddenly there shone about him 
a light above the sun." Not many months 
before the man whose memory Paul hated 
had recognized doubt as the heaviest trouble 
good men have to bear. Referring to doubt- 
ing John the Baptist, he had said, " Come 
unto me all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest ! Take my 
yoke upon you and learn of me, for my yoke 
is easy ! " 

In the dazzling light Paul heard the same 
voice, using the same figure of an ox which 
will not accept its master's yoke but pushes 
back against the iron pointed goad, and 
saying to him, " It is hard for thee to kick 
against the pricks ! " It seems to us that 
the Lord had been long watching Paul, pity- 



124 ANCIENT CITIES, 

ing the struggles caused by a mistaken creed, 
and at last repeated to hint, in slightly dif- 
ferent language, the words spoken once be- 
fore to help another doubter struggling in 
similar bewilderment. For these words, " It 
is hard for thee to kick against the pricks ! " 
were only another way of saying, " Take 
my yoke and I will give thee rest ! " 

That Paul so understood them his future 
conduct proves. It seems appropriate that 
the great Apostle, who had been made a 
terror to others and a torment to himself by 
a false and fiendish creed, should find the 
peace that passeth understanding in that 
bright spot, which lies in the earth's dark 
shadow like a Christian's hope in the gloom 
of earthly desolations, the humble, homelike 
city of Damascus. 



VIII. 



TYRE, THE CITY OF MERCHANTS. 

On the east shore of the Mediterranean, 
between the Gulf of Issus and Egypt, an 
extremely narrow belt of level land sepa- 
rates the sea from the mountains of Leba- 
non. A few miles south of Tyre the moun- 
tains reach the sea in an abrupt cliff called 
the " Tyrian Ladder," along which a road 
was carried in a gallery overhanging the 
water. South of the Tyrian Ladder, and in- 
terrupted only by the promontory of Carmel, 
the level widens into the maritime plain once 
inhabited by the Philistines, and named after 
them Philistia, or Palestine. North of the 
Tyrian Ladder the margin was called " Ca- 
naan," or "The Lowland." 

Before historic times Canaan was occupied 
by a race of men named, probably from their 
swart complexions, Phoenicians or Ked-Men. 
Their territory extended north a hundred 
and twenty miles, its breadth at no point 
exceeding twenty miles, often narrowed to 



126 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



one, and sometimes vanished between the 
mountains and the sea. It was fertilized by 
frequent streams descending from the moun- 
tains, and the mountains themselves supplied, 
the best ship-timber known to the ancient 
world. 

Before the age of Moses a score of little 
cities dotted this narrow territory. Except- 
ing Tyre and Sidon they were, like the cities 
of Greece in later times, independent of 
each other ; but, better tempered than Greek 
cities, they almost never quarreled. Incom- 
parably the most important of them all was 
the one farthest south, called from its loca- 
tion " Tzur," or " The Kock." For this rea- 
son we take it as representative of the Phoe- 
nician race. Professor Rawlinson says that 
the Greeks, unable to pronounce the word 
correctly, and therefore softening it into Syr, 
called the region about Tyre Syria, and that 
the latter term, on account of its accidental 
resemblance in sound to Assur, was after- 
ward applied to the far larger territory for 
which it stands. No other city, excepting 
only Jerusalem and Athens, has exerted an 
influence so immensely disproportionate to 
its size, and the genius of the three most 
important cities of the ancient world may be 



TYRE, THE CITY OF MERCHANTS. 127 

indicated by saying that Tyre cared for the 
bodies, Athens the minds, and Jerusalem 
the souls of men. 

A strip of land twenty-eight miles long, 
never more than six miles broad, included 
both Tyre and Sidon, which were twenty 
miles apart, and embraced all of Phoenicia 
we need here to mention. Tyre alone was 
Phoenicia more truly than Athens was Greece. 
Whether Tyre or Sidon was the elder is un- 
certain, but before authentic history begins 
Tyre had taken the precedence, and both 
cities appear to have acknowledged the same 
king, who dwelt at Tyre, but is often called 
" King of the Sidonians." 

Half a mile from the mainland a rock 
stood in the sea, exposing a rounded surface 
of something more than eighty acres. A 
short distance south of it arose a smaller 
rock showing an area above the water of 
between four and five acres. Both were 
fringed with reefs, and viewed together they 
resembled a shoe with an enormous instep 
and no heel, the toe turned north, and the 
sole pressing west toward the offing. In the 
day of Solomon, and how much earlier is 
not known, it is probable that a magnificent 
temple to the sun stood upon the larger rock. 



128 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



The deity was worshiped under the name of 
Melkarth, or " King of the City," and was 
recognized by the Greeks as the Tyrian Her- 
cules. Enormous shafts of red granite which 
probably adorned this temple have been 
found in the adjacent sea, deep buried be- 
neath silt, and there is good reason to sup- 
pose that the edifice stood upon the highest 
part of the rock, so placed that the crest of 
Mount Hermon, the chief centre of Syrian 
sun worship, was conspicuous from its east- 
ern court. A second temple, to the consort 
of the sun, seems to have stood upon the 
smaller rock. The identifications of these 
sites are purely conjectural, but they seem 
extremely probable. 

Hiram appears to have been an enthusiast 
in building temples, and the artist and work- 
men sent by him to aid in erecting the 
celebrated structure at Jerusalem probably 
acquired their experience and skill in con- 
structing sacred buildings for him upon the 
mainland near Tyre. We are told that 
Hiram sent to Solomon not only timber but 
carpenters to hew it. He had furnished 
Solomon's father with the masons who " built 
David an house," and it is not unreasonably 
inferred that he sent masons to help prepare 



TYRE, THE CITY OF MERCHANTS. 129 

the stones for the temple. The inference has 
been strengthened 'by excavations at Jeru- 
salem. By means of shafts sunk eighty feet 
below the present surface of the ground, 
Captain Warren examined the foundation 
stones laid by Solomon, some of which are 
twenty and twenty-six feet in length. The 
calcium light revealed upon them Phoenician 
numerals, letters, and other signs in red 
paint, which are supposed to be quarry 
marks made by Hiram's masons. 

At an early date some one — that it was 
Hiram himself is rendered probable by com- 
paring the descriptions of Lieutenant Con- 
der with a passage in Josephus — filled the 
channel between the two rocks on which his 
city stood. By the same means he joined 
the central mass and the surrounding reefs. 
Along the west side of the island, inlets, 
landing places, dry docks, very small in mod- 
ern eyes, but large enough to accommodate 
the vessels used in Hiram's day, were cut in 
the solid rock. These cuttings are described 
by Lieutenant, now Captain, Conder, of the 
English navy. In the northeast of the island, 
facing the mainland, a harbor with a water 
area of twenty acres was called " The Port 
of Sidon," and a second, half that size, in 



130 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



the southeast, was named "The Egyptian 
Port." 

The entire land area was less than a hun- 
dred and fifty acres. The enormous height 
of the houses enabled the city to accommo- 
date between 30,000 and 40,000 inhabitants, 
and a very considerable population dwelt 
upon the adjacent mainland in times of 
peace. How or when we know not, the city 
girt itself with massive walls, the east line 
of which confronted Alexander the Great 
with an elevation of a hundred and fifty feet. 
The buildings and the walls have vanished. 
Their fragments shallow the surrounding 
waters. But excepting one change made by 
Alexander, the site probably remains nearly 
as it was left by King Hiram. 

Tyre may rank third among cities in 
weight of influence upon the human race. 
For she taught mankind effectually three 
facts which had to be in some way discov- 
ered, and in some degree believed, before 
the world could be prepared by Athens for 
the teachings of Jerusalem. The facts were 
these : That the sea was not designed to 
sever but to unite the nations. That peace 
is more profitable than war. That it is more 
blessed to give than to receive. 



TYRE, THE CITY OF MERCHANTS. 131 

Before Tyre launched her ships, the ocean 
was simply a terror to men. It formed the 
impassable barrier of their migrations. It 
was the mysterious mother of storms. The 
most dreaded monsters of their mythologies 
inhabited the sea. Man's safety was felt to 
lie in keeping well away from them on land. 
The Tyrians broke the spell. They sailed 
forth despite the monsters. They sailed by 
the north star, which for that reason the 
Greeks called the Phoenician star. Because 
it guided them safely, the Tyrians wor- 
shiped it together with the moon under the 
name of Astarte. Wise Solomon offered to 
build ships on the Red Sea, if Hiram would 
man them, and Tyrian sailors divided the 
wealth of the Indies between Tyre and Jeru- 
salem. In a later age Jehoshaphat attempted 
to navigate the same waters without the 
Tyrian sailors, and his vessels were splintered 
upon the rocks of Ezion Geber before they 
had fairly got to sea. While the Greeks still 
regarded Theseus for sailing beyond the Hel- 
lespont as we regard Columbus, Tyrian sail- 
ors had crossed the Mediterranean. They 
planted colonies in Utica, Carthage, and Ca- 
diz ; passed the pillars of Hercules, and cov- 
ered their little rock with gold from Spain, 



132 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



tin from Cornwall, and amber from the 
Baltic. Two thousand years before Vasco 
di Gama astounded Europe by doubling the 
Cape of Good Hope, Tyrians had circumnav- 
igated Africa, and provoked the incredulity 
of Herodotus by telling of regions where the 
sun always cast the shadows south. Cadem 
in Semitic tongues means east, Europe in 
the same means west, and the fables of 
Cadmus bringing letters into Greece and 
Europa swimming forth from Tyre were 
Greek ways of keeping in mind that Europe 
owed to Tyre both her education and her en- 
terprise. The facts by no means rest upon a 
basis of mythology. Wherever Phoenicians 
learned them, — some say from Egypt, some 
say from Chaldsea, and the latter seem cor- 
rect, — it is certain that Tyre taught Greece 
her letters, and the enormous wealth which 
Tyre had found in Spain, the ancient Peru, 
eventually excited the cupidity of Greece 
and sent her young men also sailing after 
golden fleeces. 

There is no other discipline which so rap- 
idly develops in men hardihood, courage, 
and mental alertness as the discipline of 
contending with waves and winds upon the 
ocean. Proof of that statement abounds in 



TYRE, THE CITY OF MERCHANTS. 133 

the histories of the Saxons, the Danes, the 
Hollanders, and in the histories of Maine 
and Massachusetts. No ancient people ap- 
proached the Phoenicians in seamanship, and 
no people, ancient or modern, have equaled 
them in the energy and endurance by which 
their skill in seamanship was gained. There- 
fore, the Tyrians became the bravest of 
ancient peoples, and the most fertile in re- 
source. 

Because they were so brave they were able 
to teach the profitableness of peace. They 
attacked no one. They made friends with all. 
What they desired they sought to obtain by 
fair exchange, and so taught mankind the 
meaning of the word " Com-merce," or 
" Mutual-reward," and were the first to prove 
by their example that commerce was more 
remunerative than pillage. 

The Phoenicians had somewhere learned 
that it is more blessed to give than to re- 
ceive. They were the first peaceful colo- 
nizers. Other nations sought increase of 
power and population by conquest only. 
They knew how to take whole peoples cap- 
tive, plant them in subject cities, or use 
them as slaves. Tyre inverted that policy. 
She had caught some whisper of the voice 



134 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



which bids men found a kingdom by forsak- 
ing father and mother, if need be, and giv- 
ing themselves. Few as they were in num- 
bers the Tyrians very early began sending 
forth men and women to found other cities 
in distant places for the common benefit, 
not only of those at home, but of those 
among whom they went. So arose Utica, or 
Old Town, and near it Carthage, or New 
Town, and Cadiz in Spain. 

Other sunny memories might be added 
from the history of ancient Tyre. The gen- 
erous manhood of Tyrian sailors is vividly 
portrayed in the noble poeni of J onah. Zeno, 
who came near discovering that all men un- 
der heaven are of one blood, and should 
therefore count each other brothers, was the 
son of a Tyrian merchant, and is thought by 
Mr. Merivale to have been born at Tyre. 

But through her religion Tyre exercised 
a baleful influence upon the ancient world. 
From her both Syria and Greece received 
the worst of their abominations. From her, 
by help of Moab, Israel learned to make 
" her children pass through fire unto Mo- 
loch." 

There was fast friendship between King 
David and King Hiram. They spoke slightly 



TYRE, THE CITY OF MERCHANTS. 135 

different dialects of the same language, and 
were joined by many ties of mutual advan- 
tage. This Tyrian friendship continued 
beyond the age of Solomon, and its fatal 
fascination caused the ruin of Israel when 
the fierce but fascinating Jezebel, the only 
person Elijah ever feared, came from Tyre 
to bewitch Ahab, fight the great reformer, 
and receive at last, by a horrible death, her 
merited reward. There was never open war 
between Israel and Tyre, but the friendship 
between them had cooled in the age of the 
prophet Joel, who denounced Tyrian mer- 
chants for selling Hebrew slaves to foreign- 
ers. In view of these denunciations it is in- 
teresting to read on the clay tablet found at 
Nineveh the contract of a Tyrian merchant 
with an Assyrian lady for the sale of two 
Hebrew slaves. 

The oldest historic mention of Tyre oc- 
curs in a papyrus manuscript now in the 
British Museum. It is one of the oldest 
manuscripts in the world. It was written 
before the age of Joshua, and appears to be 
the letter of an official sent by Pharaoh to 
inspect the military posts in Syria, to a 
friend in Egypt. The writer laments the 
badness of the roads, tells how his chariot 



136 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



broke down, and compelled him to spend 
twenty-four hours in a stupid village while 
the blacksmith made repairs ; relates how 
his baggage was stolen by a thief while he 
slept, and his heart by a lovely lady when 
he awoke ; and adds that he had visited 
Sidon, Sarepta, and "Tyre on the sea, to 
which water is carried in barks, and which 
is richer in fishes than in sands." 

The last allusion to Tyre I shall quote 
was written by Renan, some twenty years 
ago. " Phoenicia is the only country in the 
world in which the industrial arts have left 
magnificent remains. A wine press there 
resembles a triumphal arch. Industrial ap- 
pliances with us so fragile are there colossal. 
The Phoenicians built presses and fish ponds 
for eternity. In the neighborhood of Tyre, 
these primitive remains are found upon al- 
most every height." 

We have noticed the kind of discipline 
by which the Tyrians were trained. Though 
loath to make war they were prompt to repel 
invasion. Three of the many recorded sieges 
of their city equal in heroism of resistance 
the defense of Saragossa. 

Five years Tyre held out against the whole 
power of Assyria, under Shalmaneser. When 



TYRE, TEE CITY OF MERCHANTS. 137 

Nebuchadnezzar, one of the ablest, perhaps 
the ablest monarch before Caesar, had con- 
quered Egypt and the Orient, Tyre was the 
only city which successfully defied him. For 
thirteen years he besieged it, and there is 
no proof that the long siege was successful, 
though the rest of Phoenicia yielded to him. 

When the battle of Issus had crushed the 
power of Persia, other cities hastened to send 
Alexander tokens of surrender. But Tyre, 
true to her traditions, defied him. He be- 
gan a siege which lasted seven months, He 
was forced to call every ship he could com- 
mand to aid in the blockade, while he pressed 
the attack by building that stupendous mole 
which still joins the island to the mainland, 
and has changed the outline of the place 
from a shoe into a boot. Inch by inch the 
Tyrians fought him. They invented engines 
of defense formidable as his engines of as- 
sault. When at last the conqueror entered 
the city, he razed the walls, left it a desert, 
and carried 30,000 captives into slavery. 
Superstition or policy moved him to treat 
with reverence the temple of Melkarth, or 
Hercules, and liberate those defenders who 
had sought refuge within its walls. 

In the twelfth century Tyre was captured 



138 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



by the crusaders. After a brief period of 
triumph the cross had begun to retreat be- 
fore the crescent, when the Venetians, con- 
vinced that it would benefit their commerce 
to do so, were persuaded to take arms against 
the Saracens. They sent a powerful fleet to 
Palestine, which on the way thither attacked 
and put to flight the fleet of their Christian 
brethren of Genoa. The Council of Jerusa- 
lem could not determine whether to attack 
Askelon or Tyre. They wrote the names of 
the two cities upon separate parchments, and 
laid them upon the altar in the Church of the 
Holy Sepulchre. An orphan child, doubt- 
less with appropriate ceremonies, was led be- 
tween lines of kneeling warriors, to the altar, 
and bidden to take one of the parchments. 
He took that which bore the name of Tyre. 
By this fierce perversion of Isaiah's proph- 
ecy, " a little child shall lead them," the 
crusaders were convinced that God directed 
them to Tyre. The whole Venetian navy 
blockaded the little city on the west, — re- 
member how small it was, less than a hun- 
dred and fifty acres, — while the entire cru- 
sading army assaulted from the east. Month 
after month the brave defenders held out, re- 
turning blow for blow. The land forces at 



TYRE, THE CITY OF MERCHANTS, 139 

last lost heart. They refused to continue 
the attack. The Venetians who, like the 
ancient Tyrians, had gathered their 'courage 
from the sea, landed, entered the camp of 
their allies each carrying an oar upon his 
shoulder, and declared they would fight their 
way across the mole with oars, as the Franks 
could not take it with their spears. Shamed 
by the taunt, the army renewed the attack, 
and Tyre was taken. 

There seems to have been a contagion of 
courage in the stones of Tyre. In 1188, 
when Saladin had conquered Jerusalem, 
Tyre, now in Christian hands, checked his 
victorious career as she had checked of old 
the careers of Nebuchadnezzar and of Alex- 
ander. The French soldier, Conrad of Mont- 
ferrat, commanded the defense. His aged 
father had been taken prisoner in the battle 
of Tiberias. Saladin summoned the city to 
surrender. Conrad refused. The citizens 
resolved man by man to perish rather than 
open their gates to the enemy. Saladin 
threatened to advance with Conrad's father 
bound in front of his army, a target for 
missiles shot from either side. " I will shoot 
the first arrow, and when my father falls 
thank God I am the son of a Christian 
martyr ! " was Conrad's reply. 



140 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



Saladin could not fulfill his threat. Brave 
men do not easily succeed when they try to 
act as dastards. But the Saracens attacked, 
they fought bravely, wisely, and long, but 
they could not take the city. 

In 1291 Tyre died. We say a man dies 
when his spirit leaves his body. Therefore 
we say Tyre died. The same day upon which 
Acre fell the Tyrians deserted their city. 
Without protest, without debate, without a 
blow in her defense, those who should have 
been her protectors fled in their vessels. 
They stole away by night and left the gates, 
which Nebuchadnezzar and Saladin had 
vainly tried to force, open to the enemy. 
The craven citizens hoped their cowardice 
would save them, and refused to countenance 
resistance. The Saracens entered unopposed. 
A massacre ensued. " The Musselmans," 
says Michaud, " seemed to wish to destroy 
the very earth on which the Christians trod ; 
their houses, their temples, the monuments 
of their piety, their valor, and their industry, 
everything was condemned to perish with 
them by the sword or by fire." 

From this destruction Tyre never rose 
again, but she still lingered on, a body with- 
out a soul, until captured by the Turks in 



TYRE, THE CITY OF MERCHANTS. 141 

1516, and made by them the desolation she 
appears to-day. 

Enough has perhaps been said to suggest 
the question : " How could Tyre be so great 
without being greater ? Why did she van- 
ish so utterly from history ? Why did she 
leave no monuments? Why has she who 
gave letters to Greece left no literature 
beyond a few paltry inscriptions like those 
exhumed by Di Cesnola in Cyprus, no art 
remains beyond the poor bronzes whose 
shattered fragments, pieced together by M. 
Clermont Ganneau, tell us they once formed 
a vase offered by a King Hiram to God Mel- 
karth?" 

The answer is at hand. Americans would 
do well to ponder it. Tyre thought she 
worshiped Melkarth. She did worship 
Mammon. The absorbing object of her en- 
terprise was wealth. To win riches, she ex- 
ercised a wisdom and an energy never 
equaled by the children of light in their 
quest of better things. " Seek ye first the 
kingdom of God and his righteousness, and 
other good things shall be added unto you," 
is the law of life omnipotent upon this 
planet. To invert that law, to seek first 
other good things in hope that righteousness 



142 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



will at last be added, is to obey the law of 
death equally omnipotent, That Tyre did, 
and therefore Tyre perished, and perished 
utterly. 



IX. 



ATHENS, THE CITY OF CULTURE. 

Athens attained to the height of her 
splendor about 444 b. c. The period of 
her most important service to the world be- 
gan a century later. At the first date she 
was a dandelion in blossom, the loveliest of 
flowers. At the latter she was the same 
dandelion when the winds begin to drive 
its ripe seeds to the work for which wings 
are given them. 

The battle of Issus, 333 b. c., marks the 
most important date in Grecian annals, if 
we measure history, as we pretend to do, 
from the year of our Lord, and recognize 
the chief significance of events in the rela- 
tions they bear to the Saviour of the world. 
For Athens prepared the electric wires by 
which the word of God was carried from 
Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, and at 
Issus Alexander began their ultimate adjust- 
ment. 

A unique civic atmosphere fitted Athens 
for her mission, 



144 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



Imagine that no Bibles, or almost none, 
exist in the city where you live, while yet, 
in some way, all your fellow citizens have 
become more familiar with the contents of 
the Bible than any one of them actually is. 
The leaves of the book, we will suppose, were 
torn apart years ago, and scattered through 
the streets, where every verse turned into a 
picture, and every parable and prophecy 
into a marble group. "Wealth we will sup- 
pose has never been fashionable among your 
people, Eiches can win no prestige except 
by being used for the public benefit. No 
one cares to live in a finer house, or to dress 
more expensively than his neighbors, for to 
do so provokes contempt or ridicule, and 
gets one called a barbarian. Public reve- 
nues and private fortunes have been gener- 
ally devoted to making the city a visible 
reproduction of the Bible. The store fronts 
are frescoed with illustrations of Solomon's 
proverbs. The main street is named " St. 
John's," and before each house upon it 
stands a marble bust of the disciple whom 
Jesus loved. The central avenue is appro- 
priately called " Cross Street," from the 
endless variety of crosses, one of which ap- 
pears in metal or in marble before every 



ATHENS, THE CITY OF CULTURE. 145 

door that opens into it. Other avenues are 
called after different saints, and instead of 
their names written at the corners, stand 
their busts or statues, which one must be 
able to recognize, or he cannot find his way. 
There is no spot in the city where one can 
open his eyes without beholding a sculpture 
or a fresco that illustrates some Scriptural 
scene or doctrine. There is no spot from 
which a church adorned with statues of 
Scriptural characters is not conspicuous. 
Instead of capitol or court house, a church 
occupies the most conspicuous location in 
the city, and beside it, towering above its 
spire, a colossal image of Jesus upon the 
cross marks the spot where all the citizens 
believe their Lord was crucified. 

The theatres are open to the sky. Every 
one frequents them. The front seats are re- 
served for ministers and magistrates. Each 
performance is opened with prayer, and the 
serious plays written by men who have had 
few peers and no superiors are based upon 
the Bible. 

The innumerable statues which adorn the 
churches, theatres, and streets, the buildings 
of which the outer walls are not painted in 
plain colors but frescoed with Scripture 



146 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



scenes by artists such as Polygnotus and 
Apelles, even the busts which serve for 
signs at the street corners, have been ex- 
ecuted by men whose works will remain for 
two thousand years the unapproachable 
standards of loveliness for the human race. 
Indeed the ablest art critic of our century 
implies that a statue by Michael Angelo 
might rank beside one of Phidias as a stone 
mason's cutting beside the Theseus of Ca- 
nova. Add to all this that on the Public 
Park one or more of half a dozen men 
whose equals in mental ability the world 
has scarcely produced outside of Israel wait 
every day to converse upon the most impor- 
tant themes of morals and religion with all 
who care to hear them, and that other men 
do throng to profit by their wisdom. 

If the reader will imagine all this, he will 
have a more adequate conception of Athens 
in her prime than details of archaeology can 
give him. For Homer and Hesiod were the 
Greek Bible. The Athenians believed their 
Bible. Convinced that their goddess had 
founded their city and still guided its affairs, 
their current history was to them a con- 
stantly augmenting New Testament. Poets, 
artists, and teachers spent their lives iUus- 



ATHENS, THE CITY OF CULTURE. 147 

trating and enforcing the contents of this 
Bible. Their amusements were a part of 
the religion it taught, and the wealth of the 
city was lavished in making her citizens as 
Paul found them, exceedingly religious. Ex- 
cepting that religion of which the law was 
given by Moses, while the grace and truth of 
its law appeared in Jesus Christ, no religion 
among mankind has been developed by so 
much mental ability, popularized by so much 
genius, accepted and practiced with so great 
fidelity, as that of Athens ; and none has 
ended in a more hopeless anarchy of Atheism 
and despair. 

Nowhere else has the human mind at- 
tained such strength, nowhere else has cul- 
ture been so general and so diffused, as in 
Attica the fifth century before Christ. " A 
population of 90,000," says Francis Galton, 
in substance, " produced in a hundred years 
two men, Socrates and Phidias, by whose 
side we have none to place, because the whole 
population of Europe in 2,000 years has not 
produced their equals. In the same period 
the same population of 90,000 gave birth to 
fourteen men whose intellectual equals have 
been produced four or five times by the 
Anglo-Saxon race in the entire period of its 



148 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



history." "It follows," says the same author- 
ity, " that the average ability of the Athe- 
nian race was on the lowest possible estimate 
very nearly two grades higher than our owu 
(the English) ; that is about as much as our 
race is above the African negro." 

Without pressing this conclusion, though 
it comes from high authority and is con- 
firmed by strong and varied proofs, a glance 
at Athenian civilization, with its growing and 
ripened profligacies, its deliberate cruelties, 
its jealousies of every neighbor, and the 
frantic passions which rent its own bosom 
and finally destroyed its life, may suffice to 
teach us that no amount of popular educa- 
tion or mental ability without Him who was 
named Jesus can save a people from their 
sins. 

Let us visit Athens some 444 years be- 
fore the Saviour's birth. We will enter 
through the northwest or " Double Gate," 
the only one as yet identified with certainty. 
Inside the w r alls we pass eastward between 
two colonnades of white marble called 
porches. They are roofed. On the sides 
fronting the street the spaces between the 
columns are open. On the inner sides the 
columns are united by surfaces of white mar- 



ATHENS, THE CITY OF CULTURE. 149 

ble, which they frame as pictures. The 
structure upon the left hand is dedicated 
to the God of Liberty. It is filled with 
sculptures and its inner wall and ceiling are 
frescoed with a series of scenes illustrating 
the history of Athens from the earliest times. 
The structure beyond it, frescoed by Polyg- 
notus with scenes from the battle of Mara- 
thon, is called the Painted Porch or Stoa. 
Passing beyond these porches, and bending 
southeastward, we cross Hermes Street. We 
cannot pause to scrutinize the lovely busts 
of Hermes which stand in front of every 
house, but hastening forward descend into a 
valley not deep, but shaped as if a spoon half 
a mile in length with a handle extremely 
short and a bowl extremely shallow had left 
its impress upon the ground. At the centre 
of the bowl, which is an accurate ellipse, 
stands an altar to the twelve great gods. 
Here starts and terminates every road con- 
necting Athens with the rest of the world. 
The major axis of the ellipse, along which 
we have come, is less than the third of a mile 
in length, and the ellipse itself, inclosed by 
buildings and colonnades, contains statues 
of every Olympic deity and of the most 
illustrious Athenians. The statues of Har- 



150 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



modius and Aristogeiton occupy the posi- 
tion of honor at the southeast entrance, 
near the foot of the Acropolis. This ellipse 
is the place of business and industrial activ- 
ity. It is divided into sections occupied by 
different trades, and each section is marked 
by the statue of its patron deity. It is also 
the parlor of the city, the place for conver- 
sation. Here statesmen, generals, poets, 
philosophers, merchants, and artisans meet 
as social equals. There has never been in 
any other time or place such complete fra- 
ternity of classes as prevailed among the 
citizens of ancient Athens. The equality we 
feign in Christian churches existed there. 
The ellipse we have tried to describe was 
called the Agora, and is in the New 
Testament inadequately rendered " Market 
Place." 

Before that cobbler's bench a little crowd 
has gathered. They are listening to Socra- 
tes. He has asked the cobbler some ques- 
tion about leather, and the answer has led 
on to one of those conversations which, re- 
produced by Plato, will be cherished by the 
world among its most precious intellectual 
treasures. 

While Socrates is talking, a trumpet has 



ATHENS, THE CITY OF CULTURE. 151 

sounded. In obedience to the signal, other 
parts of the Agora have been deserted. But 
it is not strange that those near Socrates 
have failed to hear the summons. Neither 
have they noticed men stretching between 
them ropes stained with vermilion powder, 
and racing across the Agora as if to sweep 
it clear. All who notice fly before the run- 
ners, for the rope marks with a smirch of 
red each man it touches, and citizens so 
marked will be recognized as late or absent 
from the meeting of the legislature, and 
fined, for every citizen belongs to the gen- 
eral court, and is obliged to attend its ses- 
sions. The trumpet has called them to- 
gether, and those who are not present at the 
opening prayers will have to pay the fine. 
The citizens thus summoned by the trumpet 
were named, to distinguish them from the 
slaves, " the called ones " or the " ecclesia." 
This is the name so dear to Paul, the " ec- 
clesia " or " Church," which signified men 
called by Jesus Christ to be kings and 
priests, as the citizens of Athens were called 
to their place of legislation. 

We look up to see the trumpeter. We 
are facing southeast, and standing in the 
centre of the Agora. On our left hand, con- 



152 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



spicuous above all intervening buildings, just 
outside the limits of the Agora, rises the hill 
named Areopagus. The trumpeter is not 
there. On our right, a little farther off, is 
a larger hill called " Museum " because a 
mythical prophet named Museus is supposed 
to have been buried upon it. The trumpeter 
is not there. Directly before us, bounding 
the Agora southeastward, is a still higher 
elevation, the Acropolis or Citadel. The 
trumpeter is not there. We would have been 
wiser to follow Socrates. Directly behind us, 
whither he has gone, at the western end of 
the Agora, stands a hill called Pnyx, or the 
" Place of Assemblies," from a root suggest- 
ing fists, because the fist is made by bring- 
ing the fingers together. Cut in the solid 
rock of this hill is a theatre open to the sky, 
and large enough to seat six thousand citi- 
zens, with two square yards of space for each. 
The speaker's stand, a portion of the native 
rock left in place, is called " the Step " or 
" Bema." It belongs alike to all, and each 
speaker to ascend it must step forth from 
the other citizens as from among his equals. 
Beside this Bema stands the trumpeter. Soc- 
rates sits near him, and Pericles is rising to 
address the Assembly. In a later genera- 



ATHENS, THE CITY OF CULTURE. 153 

tion, Demosthenes and Eschines will follow 
him. 

Four centuries and more after Pericles, 
Paul was standing possibly upon the spot 
where we first saw Socrates — for it has not 
been proved that a new Agora had sup- 
planted the old. Certainly Paul was talk- 
ing, as Socrates had talked, with the man he 
had found nearest at hand, when the listeners 
who had gathered around him invited the 
Apostle to prolong his discourse, and con- 
ducted him for that purpose to the more 
secluded Areopagus. Thither let us follow. 
Steep steps cut in the face of the rock lead 
upward to it. Upon the rounded summit 
of the hill are the stone seats of the judges 
who try capital cases and of the officials 
who manage the religious affairs of the city. 
Before these are two large stones — prob- 
ably surmounted by short metal pillars. On 
one is inscribed " Implacable," on the other, 
" Crime." Upon these stones accuser and 
accused must stand facing each other, and 
plead their own causes before the most au- 
gust tribunal of Athens. In close proximity 
below it is the temple of Conscience, whose 
stings the Greeks with fine intuition named 
at once "The Tormentors" and "The Well- 
wishers," or Erinnys and Eumenides. 



154 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



Descending once more into the Agora, we 
move southeast along its major axis toward 
the Acropolis. Behind us rises the Pnyx 
hill, where we left Socrates ; on our left, the 
Areopagus, where we leave Paul ; on our 
right, the Museum ; before us, the Acropolis. 
The ascent to it, three hundred feet, slopes 
steeply upward from the Agora for a few 
paces, then rises abruptly. By steps hewn 
in the rock we approach the summit. The 
stairway terminates in the most splendid 
gateway ever seen on earth. Through a 
vestibule of sculptured white marble glow- 
ing with color, on the right hand a marble 
wing balancing the most superb gallery of 
pictures in Athens, on the left, we pass 
through either of five entrances which open 
with folding doors of massive bronze upon 
the summit of the Acropolis. It is a lev- 
eled rock, the highest in the city, a thousand 
feet from east to west, five hundred north to 
south, descending sheer on every side except 
the west, and accessible only by the stairway 
we have surmounted. Near the south verge, 
facing east, upon the crest of the city, stands 
the Parthenon, not, as we imagine it, a cold 
white miracle of beauty, but glowing with 
gold and color. Opposite, upon the north 



ATHENS, THE CITY OF CULTURE. 155 

verge, stands a smaller temple consecrated 
to the same goddess, the Erectheum, the su- 
preme model of Ionic as is the Parthenon of 
Doric grace. 

The space between these temples and the 
entire surface of the Acropolis is covered 
with a forest of statues. In the centre of 
this forest, midway between her two temples, 
facing west and raised upon a lofty pedes- 
tal, stands the Colossus of Athena. Cast by 
Phidias, from the spoils of Marathon; seven- 
ty feet in height, with spear and shield and 
helmet, it towers above every other structure 
in Athens, the first object seen by the sailors 
as they round the cape of Sunium. 

We will view the city through the eyes 
of the statue. Southwestward two parallel 
lines of military defense called the " Long 
walls " protect the road to Piraeus harbor. 
Conspicuous beyond them rises the lofty 
steep of iEgaleos, whence Xerxes watched 
the sea fight which drove him back to Susa, 
to be tricked by Haman and saved by Queen 
Esther. 

" A king sat on the rocky brow 
That looks o'er sea-born Salamis, 
And ships by thousands lay below, 
And men in nations ; all were his, 
He counted them at break of day, 
And at sunset where were they ? " 



156 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



Sweeping around the plain west, north, 
east, the mountains ascend in graceful slopes, 
at points advancing to within a mile of the 
walls. Two miles away, upon the norths 
west, winds the Cephissus : half a mile to the 
south, the Ilissus. The city is girt with ceme- 
teries so exquisitely laid out with flowers, 
statues, and porches as to be the favorite 
resorts of leisure. The loveliest lies north- 
west. There are the graves of the most il- 
lustrious patriots. There among the flowers 
and the marbles, Lysias pronounced the Fu- 
neral Oration. In this vicinity, on the banks 
of the Cephissus, but precisely where is not 
yet known, in a suburb called The Academy, 
was the garden in which Plato taught. 

Within the walls, and near the gate by 
which we entered, the Painted Porch or Stoa 
is full in view. The man who will in a hun- 
dred years be seen walking to and fro be- 
hind its columns, surrounded by a throng of 
youths, and pausing at times to emphasize 
his words by pointing to the pictures of 
Marathon upon the inner wall, is the son of 
a Tyrian merchant. He was bringing a 
cargo of merchandise from Cyprus, was 
wrecked near Sunium, and has since spent 
his time in teaching the young men of 



ATHENS, THE CITY OF CULTURE. 157 

Athens truths which, three hundred years 
later, will form during two centuries the re- 
ligion of the wisest and best of both Greece 
and Rome. His name is Zeno, and his dis- 
ciples are called, from their place of meet- 
ing, Stoics or " Porch men," as the disciples 
of Plato are called men of the Academy. 

Southward, on the banks of the Ilissus, 
appears a temple to Apollo, the " Wolf- 
slayer," or " Lyceus." In the adjacent 
grove, called from its nearness to the tem- 
ple, "The Lyceum," Aristotle will teach. 
If one chose to give loose rein to fancy, he 
might discern in the name a prediction of 
the day when the renewed study of Aristotle 
will begin to destroy in mediaeval Europe 
the superstitions which almost devoured 
Christendom. Bible exegetes have often be- 
littled the Scriptures they meant to exalt by 
attempts to prove their inspiration from co- 
incidences even more fantastic. 

We know not where, but at some point 
within the city walls, and, though the evi- 
dence is purely conjectural, quite probably 
upon Museum Hill, was another famous gar- 
den. It was occupied by a society of men 
and women unlike any seen before it, and 
not unlike that Brook Farm community to 



158 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



which Margaret Fuller, Emerson, and Haw- 
thorne have given a wide celebrity. The 
master and teacher was Epicurus, a noble 
and self- denying man, whose doctrines, 
abused and quite inverted by his later fol- 
lowers, became at last a philosophy of for- 
mulated vice. 

It is evident from what has preceded, 
that Athens was distinctively a city of talk- 
ers ; of talkers in that noblest sense of the 
term which underlies its meaning, when 
Christ is named the " Word of God." The 
Agora was a parlor or place of conversa- 
tion. The city was filled with porches, and 
surrounded with gardens, where men re- 
sorted to talk. Every citizen was a member 
of the legislature, and there was prompted 
by ambition to learn the art of effective 
speech. Before the court of Areopagus, 
plaintiff and defendant must each plead his 
own cause. The banquets of Aspasia, a 
magnificent and greatly slandered woman, 
were types of many others where food and 
wine were forgotten in the main purpose of 
the meeting, which was conversation. The 
most influential Athenians were those who 
could talk most ably. 

Three results were inevitable from such a 



ATHENS, THE CITY OF CULTURE. 159 

soil and climate. A language was devel- 
oped which has never been equaled in power, 
range, and accuracy of expression, and in 
melody of sound. The Greek tongue excels 
all other tongues, as Greek art transcends 
all other art. A sentiment was generated 
and diffused which counted mental more 
precious than material riches, and realized 
that a man's life consists not in the abun- 
dance of the things he possesses, but in that 
which he is. Because they were mentally 
the ablest, the most cultivated, and in all 
powers of expression, whether music, art, or 
speech, immeasurably the most gifted of 
mankind, the Greeks naturally became the 
teachers of the race, so that eventually every 
revelation made in Greek came with wings. 
The religion of Israel, which had limped in 
Hebrew, flew when it was translated into 
Greek. The same hand which in Palestine 
prepared the bread of life, in Greece con- 
structed the vehicle for its distribution. In 
the age of Xerxes, Greek influence had be- 
gun to pervade the East. The campaigns of 
Alexander made that influence predominant. 
When Aristotle had taught the great Ma- 
cedonian all he could of Athenian culture, 
the eastern campaign began. In ten years, 



160 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



by a career of conquest as yet unparalleled, 
Alexander overran western Asia and a great 
part of India. Hundreds of Greek cities 
sprang up in all parts of these vast domin- 
ions. Greek thought, Greek customs, and 
especially the Greek language, became do- 
mesticated from the Nile to the Euphrates. 
At Alexander's death the world split into 
three empires, ruled by three of his gener- 
als. But the brain and heart of Greece was 
not Macedon, but still Athens. At Alexan- 
dria Ptolemy Soter had the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures translated into Greek, and the com- 
merce of the world was put into the hands 
of Greeks. These influences worked subtly 
but steadily, until the time of Christ. At 
no other period of the world's history has so 
weighty a proportion of the human race been 
acquainted with a single language as was 
familiar with Greek when Paul began to 
preach. It was the language of commerce, 
of literature, of fashion, of everything but 
war. In this language the Apostles deliv- 
ered their message. In it the New Testa- 
ment was written, and into it the Old Tes- 
tament had already been translated. 

Thus Athens laid the wires over which 
the word of God was flashed to the ends of 



ATHENS, THE CITY OF CULTURE. 161 



the earth. Thus Athens did for men's minds 
what Tyre did for their bodies. Without 
the Greek language prepared at Athens by- 
centuries of intellectual activity, the New- 
Testament could not have been written, for 
no other tongue possessed resources adequate 
to the requirements of either John or Paul. 
Without the Greek language, diffused from 
Macedon and Alexandria, Christianity could 
not, for centuries, at least, have been 
" preached to all nations." Without those 
cravings excited by Grecian thought, and 
tantalized by Greek philosophies which could 
not satisfy them, men would not have been 
ready to receive the gospel. The thirsts 
generated by the Ilissus, which to-day is 
dry, led them to Him who alone could give 
the living waters which flow forever. 

Athens, the palace of beauty, the citadel 
of mind, the throne of culture, her beauty 
dissolved, her citadel in ruins, her culture 
ending in a horror of great darkness — an 
anarchy of epicurean sensuality or stoical 
despair — Athens totally unable to discover 
or invent a religion adequate to human 
needs, is the most convincing witness to 
man's need of Him who came down from 
heaven to give life unto the world. 



X. 



ROME, THE CITY OF THE LAW-GIVERS. 

Somewhere in the suburbs of Jerusalem, 
the exact locality is doubtful, was a spot, 
probably a little hill, which was called in the 
Hebrew tongue, Golgotha, in Latin, Cal- 
vary, in English, " The place of a skull." 
Here, where some have supposed the config- 
uration of the ground suggested a skull, and 
others that a burial-place reminded of death, 
a throne was placed and laws promulgated. 
The throne was a cross, and the laws were 
the Sermon on the Mount. 

On the left bank of the Tiber, fourteen 
miles above its mouth, was a little hill called 
the place of the Head, in Latin the Capitol. 
A myth derived its name from the discovery 
upon it of a human head, by men digging 
for the foundations of a temple, but the 
name was probably given to mark the spot 
as the seat of authority and the source of 
national life. Here a sceptre was lifted and 
laws promulgated. The sceptre was a sword, 



ROME, THE CITY OF LAW-GIVERS. 163 

and the laws the wisest and the best which 
have ever depended upon the sword for their 
enforcement. 

Upon the hill of death at J erusalem the 
cross and the sword fought their first battle, 
and there the sword appeared to be the 
stronger. Three centuries later they met 
again at the place of life in Rome, in a crisis 
which proved that the cross had been the 
stronger. The most important story Rome 
can tell is the conquest of the Capitol by 
Calvary. 

A little southeast of the Capitoline was a 
second hill, called for unknown reasons the 
Palatine. Upon this Romulus was said to 
have been suckled, and his straw-thatched 
hut was reverently exhibited in the days of 
Julius Csesar. The valley between these 
hills was originally a marsh. During the 
dry season it formed a battle-ground for the 
two hostile tribes which occupied the adja- 
cent eminences, but" when the Sabines on the 
Capitoline, and the Latins on the Palatine 
had been united under a single government, 
the marsh, drained by an enormous sewer, 
became the heart of Rome, and eventually 
of the empire. 

We will visit it upon the 15th day of 



164 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



March, 44 b. c, and take our stand upon a 
low platform, at the base of the Capitoline 
hill, facing southeast, toward the Palatine. 
Before us lies an open space paved with 
blocks of travertine. It is three hundred 
and seventy-five feet long, and narrows reg- 
ularly, as it leaves us, from a breadth of one 
hundred and fifty to one of one hundred 
and ten feet. It is inclosed by buildings 
which, extending in all directions, form the 
wilderness of Rome. It is the " Great Fo- 
rum." The platform beneath us, raised 
eleven feet above the general level, paved 
and faced with white marble, and fenced 
with a railing of gilded metal, is a rectangle 
seventy-eight feet broad, and projecting half 
that distance into the Forum. It is prob- 
ably near this platform that Augustus will 
place a bronze column, will inscribe upon it, 
in gold letters, the name and distance of 
every important city on the roads leaving 
Rome, and call it the " Golden Milestone." 
From the opposite side of the platform the 
bronze beaks of ships, captured in battle, 
project over the pavement of the Forum. 
They are called Rostra. From them the 
platform is called the Rostra, and from its 
builder, the Julian Rostra. 



ROME, THE CITY OF LAW-GIVERS. 165 

On this day, March 15, 44 b. c, the 
corpse of Caesar, "marred as you see by 
traitors," lay exposed upon this platform, 
while Mark Antony pronounced the speech 
commemorated by Shakespeare. 

A careless eye reads in the bronze beaks 
that Rome is mistress of the sea; in the 
golden milestone that she rules the land; 
and sees in the body of Caesar the man who 
gained her an almost universal sovereignty. 
The bronze beaks, the golden milestone, and 
the bleeding corpse combine to tell a more 
thoughtful observer that Caesar was only the 
ablest of many journeymen executing the 
plans of a master builder they never knew, 
who was soon to reveal himself at Beth- 
lehem. 

I would have you observe from the Julian 
Rostra four objects, one on the right, one 
on the left, one in the centre, and one be- 
yond the opposite extremity of the Great 
Forum. They stand for the laws, the wars, 
the amusements, and the religion of ancient 
Rome. 

I. On the left of the Forum, distant from 
us half its length, a small square shrine of 
polished bronze gleams like gold. Through 
either of its four open doors is visible a rude 



166 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



two - faced image, with fingers twisted into 
the Latin numerals, representing three hun- 
dred and fifty-five, the number of days in 
the Latin year. It is the Etruscan Janus, 
god of time and war, after whom the first 
month in our year is named. By its side is 
an exquisite marble by a Greek artist, stolen 
from Athens, and feigned to represent the 
same divinity. The four bronze gates, al- 
ways open in time of war, and closed but 
twice since Rome began to be, must soon be 
shut for the birth of the Prince of Peace. 

At his birth Eome had attained a vast 
population which has been variously estima- 
ted by scholars. Her empire reached from 
the Thames to the Euphrates, and from Ger- 
many to the African desert and the Persian 
Gulf. It had been w r on by war. To estab- 
lish their conquests, the Romans were accus- 
tomed to build a military road to the heart 
of every province the instant it had been sub- 
dued. No conquest was thought complete 
until this had been done. By relays of 
horses kept in fortified posts, couriers moved 
from the golden milestone to all important 
centres of the empire at the rate of a hundred 
miles a day. Ships plied constantly from 
the Tiber to all Mediterranean ports. At 



ROME, THE CITY OF LAW-GIVERS, 167 

the birth of Christ, for the first time in his- 
tory, communication between peoples speak- 
ing " every language under heaven " was 
frequent, safe, and rapid. In eastern Asia 
travel was easier and more secure than it is 
to-day. When the land had been threaded 
with roads, and the sea made a highway by 
men building better than they knew, the 
command was given, " Go, preach the gos- 
pel to all nations." It could be obeyed, be- 
cause the men of war had prepared the way 
before the messengers of peace. 

II. Opposite the temple of Janus, on the 
right of the Forum, stood the Basilica Julia, 
a court-house, begun by Julius Csesar and 
completed by Augustus. Its plan was re- 
produced in the public buildings erected for 
Christian worship until very recent times. 
During the first two centuries of our era, 
Christians built no churches. They held 
their meetings in private houses. But when 
church building began, it largely copied the 
Roman court-house. 

The basilica stood for Roman law. It was 
needful that the men sent forth to " disciple " 
all nations should be protected while they did 
their errand. For this purpose the nations 
must be controlled by laws protecting life 



168 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



and personal liberty. The Romans were the 
world's consummate law-givers. They repre- 
sented authority. Their legislation forms 
the basis of most European codes except the 
English, and has been influential even there. 
Those who exercise authority are still called 
by Roman names : President, Emperor, Cae- 
sar (modified into the German Kaiser and 
the Russian Czar), sovereign, or superior, 
Senator, Congressman, Legislator, Pope 
(which is Latin for father), Cardinal 
(which means " chief man "). These names 
are all inherited from Rome, and the most au- 
gust ecclesiastical organization which has yet 
existed perpetuates in the name " Roman 
Catholic Church " the memory of the un- 
equaled skill with which the Imperial City con- 
trolled all classes of men. 

Roman laws were, in most respects, just 
and beneficent. Had they not been, no 
amount of force could have held the nations 
so long in subjection to them. Neither would 
the conscience of Christendom have retained 
them in its codes. Roman law saved Paul's 
life many times, and enabled him to fight the 
good fight and finish his course. Without 
it Christianity would have been murdered in 
its cradle. To citizens just and equable, to 



ROME, THE CITY OF LAW-GIVERS. 169 

slaves it afforded no protection. For this 
reason, I think, Christ chose to die a slave's 
death. We read of Roman ladies torturing 
female slaves who had failed to satisfy their 
vanity at the toilet ; of Eoman masters feed- 
ing to their fishes the minced flesh of slaves 
who had provoked them. Doubtless such 
freaks of passion were exceptional, and 
indulged chiefly to terrorize a class grown 
formidable from its numbers and ability. 
But these and worse atrocities than these oc- 
curred unrebuked, and even Cicero and Sen- 
eca taught that it was a duty to regard slaves 
not as human beings, but as dogs and cattle. 
Soon after the death of Christ, a Christian 
sentiment began to appear, first in their 
treatment, and eventually in the laws which 
regulated their treatment. This sentiment 
marked the first step toward the conversion of 
the Roman Empire. 

III. Near the centre of the Forum, be- 
tween the temple of J anus and the Basilica 
J ulia, appeared at times, long before Caesar, 
a slight and temporary wooden structure, 
arranged for gladiatorial exhibitions. The 
Etruscans sacrificed slaves at the funerals of 
distinguished men. Human sacrifices are 
known to have been prohibited, and there- 



170 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



fore were probably practiced at Rome as late 
as 87 b. c. Two hundred and sixty-four 
years before Christ the father of Decimus 
Brutus died. The son celebrated his funeral 
by arming slaves and bidding them slay each 
other. The spectacle won the favor of the 
populace. It was afterwards imitated in the 
Forum for the public entertainment. For 
these exhibitions temporary structures were 
erected. In the reign of Vespasian this 
seed had grown into the Colosseum. The 
genius of Roman manners was there revealed 
even more distinctively than in the great 
circus, which was larger, and seated more 
than 380,000 spectators. 

A man's character is shown most correctly 
not in the things he does because he must, 
but in those he does because he likes to do 
them ; not in his business, but in his amuse- 
ments. It is so with a people. Therefore 
we will visit the Colosseum to study Rome. 

The Colosseum was in plain view from 
the Great Forum southeastward along the 
Sacred Street. It occupied the site of an 
artificial lake which Nero had constructed 
for sea fights in the garden of his " Golden 
House." Every reader is familiar with its 
outlines. 



ROME, THE CITY OF LAW-GIVERS. 171 

The arena or floor was wood, and formed 
an ellipse with a major axis of 281, and a 
minor of 176 feet. Beneath the floor was 
a labyrinth of supporting arches, sinuous 
passage-ways, cages or cells for wild beasts, 
water conduits and drains, and marvelous 
machinery for the production of scenic 
effects. The arena was inclosed by a wall 
of white marble eleven feet high, surmounted 
by a fence of gilded metal bars. The top 
bars were cylinders which revolved at a 
touch, so that if a panther should leap the 
eighteen feet and clutch one of them it would 
turn and drop the beast back again inside 
the barrier. Immediately outside this bar- 
rier and rising above it ran a continuous 
marble platform profusely decorated with 
statues and broad enough for two ranges of 
movable seats, which were reserved for the 
emperor, the court, and the vestal virgins. 
The four entrances were at the extremities 
of the axes of the ellipse. The north en- 
trance opened near the emperor's throne 
and was connected by a covered way with 
his palace upon the Esquiline. 

Behind the marble platform, which was 
called the Podium, tiers of white marble, 
sloping upward and backward, afforded seats 



172 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



for 87,000 spectators, while wooden tiers 
ascending still higher accommodated half as 
many more. A line of decorated masts 
rimmed the arena. On spectacle days these 
were joined by festoons of flowers, and from 
their tops canopies of silk, stretched by ropes 
of variegated colors attached to the outer 
walls, screened the audience from the sun. 
The air was cooled by jets of perfumed 
water shot in vapors from hidden tubes. 
The seats of the wealthy were cushioned 
with silk and cloth of gold. Though the 
Colosseum had not yet been built, a scene 
such as appeared to the runner who glanced 
upward from the arena while 100,000 faces 
bending eagerly toward him were blended 
into misty outlines by the distance was in 
the mind of the inspired writer when, to 
make us realize the sympathy heavenly 
watchers feel for earthly toilers, he wrote, 
44 Seeing we also are compassed about by so 
great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside 
every weight and the sin which doth so easily 
beset us, and let us run with patience the 
race that is set before us." 

Each seat in the vast amphitheatre was 
numbered, and the ivory check for it must 
be held by its occupant. One such check 



ROME, THE CITY OF LAW-GIVERS. 173 

dug up in the Campagna, sixty miles from 
Rome, is marked " Section 6. Lowest tier. 
Seat No. 18." It was issued for the amphi- 
theatre at Frosinone, but those of the Colos- 
seum were quite similar and this one may- 
admit us there. We will take the seat it 
calls for. 

The arena, which has been strewn with 
dry sand to absorb the blood that will soon 
flow, glitters with gold and silver dust pro- 
fusely scattered to increase the costliness of 
the display. The spectacle opens with a 
procession of those who will take part in 
the contests. Bands of Roman gladiators, 
groups of strangers, Parthians, Britons, 
Moors, Germans, each in his native costume 
and armed as he will fight, march to music 
around the arena. As they pass the throne, 
the gladiators address the emperor : " Hail, 
Caesar ! Those about to die salute thee." 
When the arena has been cleared, two 
trained athletes enter it and face each other. 
One is armed with a sword and shield. 
The other carries a light net, a dagger, 
and a tripod or three-pronged spear. The 
swordsman advances. The net-bearer draws 
back, turns and flies. The swordsman pur- 
sues. Inch by inch the fugitive gains till 



174 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



clear of danger. Suddenly his strength 
appears to fail. His pace slackens. The 
sword flashes over him. As it descends he 
leaps aside, and the weapon cuts the air. 
Before the swordsman can recover for a 
second stroke, the fatal net twinkles over 
him. A dexterous jerk throws him to the 
ground. He is helplessly entangled. The 
foot of the retiarius is upon him, the tripod 
pressed upon his breast. The victor glances 
upward at the " great cloud of witnesses," 
which " compass him about." If handker- 
chiefs are waved, he must spare, if thumbs 
are turned, he must slay. Thousands of 
women ai?e watching. Among the 100,000 
spectators not one lifts a finger to save life. 
Shouts of applause, clapping of hands, cries 
of " Kill ! kill ! kill ! " salute the victor as 
he thrusts his triple spear again and again 
into the quivering flesh. 

The single combats are succeeded by con- 
tests between bands of gladiators. The 
trained athletes of Rome are matched now 
against each other, now against foreign war- 
riors, fighting according to the habits of 
their respective nations. Some are on foot, 
some on horseback, some in chariots. If 
any lag, they are driven forward by attend- 



ROME, THE CITY OF LAW-GIVERS. 175 

ants armed with whips and bars of heated 
iron. During the interludes, boys dressed 
as Mercuries and Ganymedes, and girls as 
nymphs and dryads, bear about wine and 
ices and roasted fowls, — with the compli- 
ments of the emperor, — to regale the spec- 
tators, who chat, and gossip, and make love. 
A Eoman poet declares that the amphithea- 
tre was the chief place for match-making in 
Koman society. 

The arena again is cleared ; but the peo- 
ple remain seated. Suddenly the vast floor 
appears as if shaken by an earthquake. It 
sinks here, it bulges there, it yawns yonder. 
One knows not how, no theatre in existence 
to-day could do the same, a lake appears in 
the centre. Elephants are trumpeting upon 
its brink. Rocks and trees rise out of the 
ground. Lions, panthers, Libyan tigers, are 
gliding, crouching, leaping, roaring, among 
them. Bands of men armed with spears 
and bows and swords advance to fight them. 
Five thousand wild beasts were slaughtered 
at the opening games of the Colosseum. 
How many men fell on that occasion we are 
left to conjecture. 

These were the favorite amusements of 
Rome. The passion for them grew until an 



176 



ANCIENT CITIES, 



emperor turned gladiator, and Roman la- 
dies, generally protected in iron cages, de- 
scended into the arena to kill brutes and 
murder men. 

Every city of note in Italy had its amphi- 
theatre, where at times such sports were 
practiced. But a subtle force has begun to 
work, unseen as God and equally omnipo- 
tent, — a force which will in time teach 
men to feel the worth of human life and 
the loveliness of pity. Hundreds of Chris- 
tian martyrs must perish in these shows. 
Throughout the empire, when pestilence or 
famine frightens the people and sets them 
seeking to appease the anger of their gods, 
the cry will be heard, " The Christians to 
the lions ! " But the martyrs will not die 
in vain. Soldiers will begin to ask, " Why 
do these men and women rejoice in being 
killed, while we no longer can rejoice in kill- 
ing them ? " As they gradually learn the 
answer to that question, a sentiment will be 
born, which in due time, when a Christian 
monk descends into the arena of the Colos- 
seum and is torn in pieces trying to stop the 
combat, will impel the emperor to prohibit 
gladiatorial shows forever, and the people to 
acquiesce in the decree. 



ROME, THE CITY OF LAW-GIVERS. 177 

IV. Just beyond the south bounds of the 
great Forum, opposite the Julian Kostra, 
stood the temple of Vesta. The small cir- 
cular shrine so often copied on mosaic breast- 
pins, which stands in another quarter of 
Rome, was long mistaken for this temple. 
The excavation of the house in which the 
Vestals lived was completed in 1884. It 
has fixed the site of the temple, and also 
modified our conceptions of its priestesses. 
The statues exhumed with the names of Ves- 
tal virgins inscribed upon their pedestals 
represent them as august matrons, draped in 
rich attire, with expressions of sweet and 
dignified benignity. 

The religion of Vesta was the deification 
of family life under the symbol of the 
hearthstone. The characteristic of the early 
Roman was his reverence for the family. 
He gained his great strength fighting in its 
defense. The Romans honored father and 
mother, and therefore, as was, for the same 
reason, the fact in Egypt and in China, their 
days were long in the land which the Lord 
their God gave them. Marital fidelity was 
the foundation of their character, and there- 
fore they were powerful. When these loy- 
alties ceased to rule her, Rome rapidly grew 



178 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



weak. To the simple worship of the hearth- 
stone the idolatries of Greece were added. 
The Pantheon arose, a building as unlike 
other buildings as the conglomerate of re- 
ligions it represented was unlike other relig- 
ions. The exterior of the edifice appeared a 
rounded hill of gold, a domed rotunda, 
with diameter of nearly a hundred and fifty 
feet, springing from the ground, and lighted 
at the top by a single circular opening, 
through which the sky viewed from beneath 
seemed a blue eye. The vast structure was 
neither stone, nor brick, nor iron, but cast 
in solid concrete. Without, the dome was 
covered with plates of gilded bronze. The 
interior, faced with variously colored mar- 
bles and frescoed stucco, contained niches 
for innumerable idols. One of these niches 
was offered for a statue of Christ. This 
was the building which Michael Angelo de- 
clared worthy to be translated, when he 
lifted its duplicate into the sky upon stupen- 
dous piers to form the dome of St. Peter's. 

No nation has ever risen above its religion. 
Rome sank rapidly with hers. The vilest 
cult of the ancient world was that Syrian 
sun-worship with one form of which Jezebel 
inoculated Israel in the age of Elijah. It had 



ROME, THE CITY OF LAW-GIVERS. 179 

long been creeping insidiously into Rome 
when, 219 years after Christ, the Emperor 
Elagabalus, a Syrian priest of the sun, planted 
it conspicuously there. He erected a superb 
temple upon the Palatine. Thither he carried 
the black stone symbols. They were displayed 
in a golden car. The priests of the old Ro- 
man gods followed, bearing their sacred em- 
blems to be prostrated before the new divin- 
ity. The mysterious Palladium, which had 
always been concealed from public view, was 
ostentatiously exposed as his bride. The 
most illustrious men of the empire were 
compelled to join in the procession. The 
emperor on foot and clad in silk, a material 
counted so effeminate that no Roman ruler 
had ventured to wear it before, danced to the 
music of lutes, and whirled in fantastic atti- 
tudes, clashing cymbals before the idol. 
Syrian women wreathed lascivious figures 
around the shrine, and rites were practiced 
which cannot here be named. Human sac- 
rifices emphasized the fact that cruelty and 
lust are twins. Thus the worship of the 
sun was established in the capital. That 
this marks one of the important events in 
the history of Christianity will presently 
appear. 



180 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



From the day of Pentecost the new faith 
had been quietly leavening the empire. For 
a generation it received no hindrance but 
constant help from the imperial government. 
When its roots had grown strong enough to 
endure the storm, the persecutions began, 
and rapidly increased its strength. Against 
tremendous oppositions it had permeated 
every province, but had nowhere acquired 
a legal status when the sovereignty of the 
world was divided between the two emper- 
ors Constantine and Licinius. Constantine 
was a pagan, educated to worship the god 
of the sun. But he had seen much of Chris- 
tianity, and been impressed by what he had 
seen. Two miles north of Rome, the Tiber 
was spanned by a bridge called the Milvian. 
There was fought the battle which made 
Constantine sole emperor of the West. In a 
march before the battle, if we may believe 
Eusebius, who declares he received the nar- 
rative from the emperor's own lips, a cross 
had appeared in the sky, above the sun, a 
little after midday, inscribed : " By this, con- 
quer." The appearance was visible to the 
whole army. The next night Christ ap- 
peared to him in a vision displaying the 
same symbol and bidding him make it his 
standard. 



ROME, THE CITY OF LAW-GIVERS. 181 

Con stau tine obeyed. Then was fought the 
battle which made him the sole emperor of 
the West. The story is believed by high 
authorities ; is doubted by high authorities. 
Some have attempted to explain it by nat- 
ural causes acting upon an excited imagina- 
tion. Some pronounce it wholly incredible. 
Some accept it as a miracle. But what fol- 
lows none deny. 

Constantine professed himself a Christian. 
Those who sympathized with that faith ral- 
lied to his support. Licinius was emperor 
in the East. To him the pagans turned for 
leadership 323 a. d., the two armies met in 
the battle of Adrianople. Pagan priests, 
soothsayers from Egypt, Arabian and Baby- 
lonian sorcerers thronged the army of Li- 
cinius. All the enchantments known to the 
heathen world were employed to insure the 
victory of Licinius. 

The army of Constantine advanced be- 
neath a standard called, we .know not why, 
The Labarum. It was a spear made a cross. 
From the transverse beam hung a banner of 
silk, embroidered with portraits of Constan- 
tine and his family. On the summit of the 
cross rested a golden crown, inclosing an 
image of the cross marked with the mono- 



182 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



gram of Christ. The standard was guarded 
by fifty young men, the most illustrious in 
the army. Their office was believed to ren- 
der them invulnerable to the arrows of the 
enemy. On the shields and helmets of the 
soldiers the cross was emblazoned, and the 
same emblem adorned the armor of the em- 
peror. " By this sign thou shalt conquer" 
Constantine won the battle, and became 
sole ruler of the empire. In constituting 
Christianity the religion of the state, with 
deep insight he discerned the importance of 
the Lord's Day, and with a sagacity equal 
to his insight, in the decree for its observ- 
ance upon the day sacred to the sun, no 
reference was made to our Lord's resurrec- 
tion, but the day was still called Sunday. 
The sun - worshipers were very numerous. 
They recognized in Constantine their head. 
Would they not accept Sunday as a new 
honor to their own divinity, while Christians 
welcomed with delight legal protection of 
the time they had long been accustomed to 
hallow ? The details of the required observ- 
ances, among which were the enforced sus- 
pension of labor, especially of slave labor, 
and the interruption of public games, cor- 
dially received by Christians, might be ac- 



ROME, THE CITY OF LAW-GIVERS. 183 

quiesced in by the pagans as new require- 
ments of their god. Could they fail to 
appreciate the beneficence of the day, even 
before they understood its significance? 
Thus it would become a potent factor in 
destroying the religion they expected it to 
foster. 

Such was the ultimate result of that frenzy 
of crime by which Elagabulus established in 
Rome the worship of the sun. From the 
dung heap which threatened to asphyxiate 
mankind, grew a tree of life-bearing leaves 
for the healing of the nations. 

Very recently, in 1884, excavations de- 
termined the probable site of that bronze 
equestrian statue of Constantine holding the 
cross before the citizens of Rome, which was 
erected by his command. It stood in front 
of the temple of Vesta. It was appropriate 
that the emblem of all nobility should find 
its first resting-place in Rome beside the 
symbols of that religion of the hearth-stone 
which, though inadequate, had kept Rome 
noble so long as Rome remained noble ! It 
was even more appropriate that the throne 
of Him who told us to take low seats if we 
would be exalted should, when removed from 
Calvary, be placed in the valley, at the foot 
of the Capitol it had subdued. 



XI. 



SAMARIA, THE CITY OF POLITICIANS. 

The word Samaria has two meanings. In 
the Old Testament it signifies the capital 
city of the ten tribes after their secession. 
In the New Testament it represents the cen- 
tral district of Palestine, which lay between 
Judaea and Galilee. 

The separate history of the ten tribes be- 
gins with the year 985 b. c., which followed 
the death of Solomon, and ends B. c, 721, 
when they were carried into captivity by 
Sargon. For the first fifty years of this 
period, their capital was at Shechem or Tirzah. 

I. Before the close of Napoleon's career, 
the French people began to realize with dis- 
gust that La Gloire, though a very fine thing, 
was vastly more prolific in death and taxes 
than in meat and drink. At the end of 
Solomon's reign, the Hebrew nation had 
long been smarting under a similar experi- 
ence. No office in the kingdom required 
greater tact for its successful administration 



SAMARIA, THE CITY OF POLITICIANS, 185 



than that of tax collector, in the haughty 
tribe of Ephraim, for Ephraim still regarded 
itself as the divinely selected head of the 
nation defrauded of its rights by the house 
of David. To this difficult office Solomon 
appointed the young Jeroboam, who per- 
formed its duties so adroitly as to win the 
affections of the tax-payers without abating 
their taxes. The king soon perceived that 
his officer was too able for a subject. Jero- 
boam fled to Egypt, where he married a 
relative of the reigning monarch. Upon 
the death of Solomon, the fugitive returned 
to his own country, placed himself at the 
head of the popular discontent, and drew 
ten of the twelve tribes into secession. To 
win support from the religious classes, he 
posed as the champion of orthodoxy, and 
posed so well as to deceive, for a time, the 
very elect. With no principles but ambi- 
tion, and no weapons but flattery, he was 
the ablest of pure demagogues mentioned in 
Old Testament history. To allure the more 
devout among his countrymen, he located 
his capital at Shechem. 

A little north of the line along which the 
rugged hills of Judaea soften into the gentler 
terrace-like slopes of Ephraim, lies an up- 



186 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



land plain. Its western boundary is formed 
by a sweep of bills sbaped like a pair of re- 
cumbent sugar-tongs, with claws pointing 
east. The south claw, a precipice 800 feet 
high, is Mount Gerizim; the north claw, 
distant about 1,500 feet, and similar in 
shape and size, Mount Ebal. In the valley 
between them, clasped like a lump of sugar, 
though situated a little above the claws, to- 
ward the bend of the bow, lay Shechem. 
Before the building of the temple at Jeru- 
salem, Shechem was a Mecca to the Jews. 
There Abraham had set up his first altar in 
the Holy Land. There Jacob had dug the 
well upon whose curb, long afterwards, Je- 
sus sat wearied with his journey, and told 
the amazed woman of Samaria " all that 
ever she did." There Joseph was buried, 
and from the overlooking cliffs Joshua had 
promulgated the national constitution. At 
this spot, therefore, the sagacious demagogue, 
who knew the people followed him because 
they hated to pay their taxes, and wanted 
help in feigning nobler motives, fixed his 
capital, and announced himself the purifier 
of the national religion from the idolatries 
of Solomon. 

He soon discovered that he had over- 



SAMARIA, TEE CITY OF POLITICIANS. 187 



reached himself. The memories of Shechem 
were the common heritage of the Jewish 
race, and its associations drew the seceders 
back toward their brethren and the wor- 
ship at Jerusalem. The religious unity of 
the nation must be destroyed, or its political 
rupture would soon be healed, and Jero- 
boam crushed in the closing chasm. To 
prevent this, the schemer inaugurated a new 
ceremonial. He erected two golden calves, 
one at Dan, another at Bethel, copied from 
Egypt, and declared them the duly accred- 
ited emblems of Jehovah, similar to those 
made by Aaron in the wilderness. If the 
people had been familiar with their own his- 
tory, a trick so transparent would have ex- 
cited only contempt. But as the past was 
accurately known to very few, and the ma- 
jority knew that Aaron had made a calf, 
and knew little more about the matter, the 
example of Moses's brother could be cited 
with effect. Like other demagogues, Jero- 
boam built upon the popular ignorance. 
Intelligent and conscientious men forsook 
his cause when this disguised idolatry ap- 
peared. They left Israel in large numbers, 
and removed to Judah. For this reason he 
was obliged to ordain as priests, ignorant 



188 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



and venal men, who depraved the people 
they should have elevated, propagated the 
lies they were told to teach, and prepared 
the way for all the misery that followed. 
This is the origin of that scathing epithet 
which rings through the later history of Is- 
rael, " Jeroboam, the son of JSebat, who 
made Israel to sin." His sin was the sin of 
all who see in religion their servant, not 
their master. For twenty-two years Jero- 
boam's great ability gave his shifty tricks 
an appearance of success. Two years after 
his death, the people, made by him poorer, 
more idolatrous, and vastly more unruly, be- 
cause more ignorant, than he had found 
them, ended his dynasty by murdering his 
son, and embalmed his memory in perpetual 
execration. 

II. The vacant throne was instantly seized 
by a usurper named Baasha, who anticipated 
the policy adopted by the United States in 
the Mexican war, and strove to establish his 
power, and divert public attention from in- 
ternal dissensions by fixing it upon his at- 
tempted conquest of Jerusalem. But the 
blister did not cure the fever. A brave sol- 
dier and an able captain, Baasha retained 
the sceptre twenty-four years. Two years 



SAMARIA, THE CITY OF POLITICIANS, 189 



after his death his card-house fell, and his 
dynasty ended in the assassination of his 
son. 

III. The army had now become to Israel 
what in a later age the Praetorian guard 
became to Eome. They made their captain, 
Omri, king. Though a soldier, Omri de- 
voted his energies to the arts of peace, and 
strove to aggrandize the nation by increasing 
its wealth. As Jeroboam had appealed to 
avarice, and Baasha to pride, Omri built 
upon the common love of luxury and dis- 
play. 

A few miles north of Shechem, rimmed 
by an unbroken line of hills, lies a circular 
plain, extremely fertile, and six miles in 
diameter. In the centre of the plain an 
oblong mound slopes gently upward to a 
height of three hundred feet. This mound 
King Omri purchased and built upon it a 
new capital which he called from the name 
of its former owner, Shomer's Town, or Sa- 
maria. Its shape is suggestive. It lay 
stretching east and west like a giant's grave, 
covered with flowers. In it the nobility of 
Israel was buried beneath a pall of Tyrian 
purple. 

Samaria was more easily defended than 



190 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



Shecheni, and more accessible to the lines of 
traffic between Tyre and Damascus. With- 
out a care for the religious culture of the 
people, Omri established quarters in the new- 
city for the merchants of Damascus, and ap- 
parently cultivated those commercial rela- 
tions with Tyre which were consummated in 
the marriage of his son Ahab with a Tyrian 
princess. That marriage marks the begin- 
ning of a moral pestilence in Israel similar 
to that inroad of French infidelity which, 
after the Revolution, almost destroyed the 
faith of New England. The way had been 
well prepared. The ten tribes had been 
separated from the source of true religion at 
Jerusalem by the arts of a demagogue who 
debauched their conscience to wean them 
from their faith. The separation had been 
completed by unprovoked attacks of Baasha 
upon Jerusalem. Omri finding the nation 
practically atheistic, had taught it to wor- 
ship wealth, when the splendor of Tyre be- 
gan to fascinate Israel, as Paris once cast 
her spell over America. Her conscience de- 
bauched, her religion gone, her tastes tan- 
talized by contact with a luxury she longed 
to share, Samaria opened her gates to receive 
a queen from the most sumptuous of exist- 



SAMARIA, THE CITY OF POLITICIANS. 191 



ing courts. That queen was a woman of 
immense ability, with a strength and energy 
of character equaled by no other sovereign 
of the land she came to rule. Great-aunt 
of Dido, the foundress of Carthage, and 
daughter of Ithbaal, a high priest of Astarte, 
who gained the throne by murdering his 
master, she belonged to a line of religious 
fanatics, which neither fear nor pity ever 
swerved from its designs. She was the 
bravest and the crudest of them all. In- 
tensely sincere in her faith, resolved that 
whatever fell the worship of Baal should 
stand, the beautiful Jezebel entering Sama- 
ria to contend with Elijah reminds us of 
Mary of Scotland when, trained in the court 
of the terrible De' Medicis, she landed in 
Scotland to battle with John Knox. 

Tyre was the principal centre of that sun 
worship which cast its baleful shadow over 
the whole ancient world. Originating in the 
land of Ur, in a noble admiration of the 
source of light, in Syria at last it rooted 
itself in the two most degrading passions of 
our nature, cruelty and lust. As the sun 
gave life, he must receive life in return. 
At first he was worshiped without images. 
Later, meteoric stones, which appeared to be 



192 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



shot in fire from his substance, and were be- 
lieved to contain souls, were placed in bis 
temple. Gradually be came to be figured 
as a man seated upon a bull ; his hands full 
of fruits and flowers, his brow crowned with 
an aureole of gold rays, to symbolize the 
sources of fertility. Finally, he stood a 
brazen horror, with bull's head and arms 
extended to receive the little children which, 
placed upon the monstrous palms, glided 
through the gaping jaws into a furnace glow- 
ing within the idol's belly. Mothers who 
offered their little ones must not weep nor 
sigh, lest the god should be displeased, and 
reject the sacrifice. Flutes and trumpets 
drowned the children's cries, lest Baal or 
Moloch — for they were the same — should 
hear them and be angry. The Ganges 
seems merciful in comparison with this. 
Decency forbids description of the rites with 
which the consort of Baal was adored. Their 
shamefulness was scarcely equaled by the 
cruelties practiced in honor of her lord. 

Authorities differ regarding the stage of 
development reached at Tyre by this cult. 
That city was long the chief centre of the 
system. Human sacrifices were common 
there. The Greek story of the Minotaur 



SAMARIA, TEE CITY OF POLITICIANS. 193 



devouring fair maidens and slain by Theseus 
perpetuates the memory of this Phoenician 
worship and its overthrow in Crete. It is 
certain that human sacrifices were common 
in the colonies planted by Tyre, and the ex- 
ecration felt by the prophets of Jehovah for 
the religion of Jezebel is best explained by 
the probable hypothesis that it lacked but 
little of the extreme development it is known 
to have reached elsewhere. 

J ezebel believed her religion with a strength 
of conviction, and practiced it with an en- 
ergy of devotion, equaled by only one of her 
contemporaries, her great antagonist. 

Her husband Ahab was a cipher. She 
was sovereign. When the king coveted a 
landed property which he could not buy and 
dared not steal, he whined, took to his bed, 
and sulked like a spoiled child. When Jez- 
ebel found him thus she said to him : " Arise, 
and eat bread, and let thine heart be merry : 
/ will give thee the vineyard of Naboth the 
Jezreelite." Instantly she convened the court, 
arraigned Naboth for treason, had him con- 
demned and executed under forms of law, 
and had his possessions transferred to the 
crown. % 

Upon the queen's arrival a magnificent 



194 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



temple to Baal was begun and soon com- 
pleted in Samaria, and four hundred and 
fifty foreign priests appointed to administer 
its gorgeous ritual. But the summer palace 
built by Ahab became the favorite court 
residence. 

The most beautiful and productive plain 
in Palestine lies but a few miles north of 
Samaria. From Mount Gilboa, curving 
south, the north line of the Samaritan hills 
runs west-northwest for eighteen miles, and 
terminates at the Mediterranean, in the 
promontory of Carmel. Northward from 
Gilboa a second range extends fifteen miles 
to Mount Tabor. Thence the south line of 
Galilean hills runs twelve miles, passing 
Nazareth, and reaching the sea a little north 
of Carmel. In the rich triangular plain in- 
closed between these ranges, near the foot of 
Gilboa, twelve miles east of Carmel Cliff, 
and distant seventeen from Samaria, lies a 
mound of earth very similar to that of Sa- 
maria itself, except that it is not quite so 
high nor so regular, and its east end termi- 
nates in a precipice of a hundred feet. This 
mound was named J ezreel, and after it the 
surrounding plain was called Esdraelon, 
which is Greek for " the plain of Jezreel." 



SAMARIA, TEE CITY OF POLITICIANS. 195 

Here Ahab built for Jezebel a sumptu- 
ous residence. The palace was so lavishly 
adorned with ivory as to be called "the 
ivory house." Here was built a second tem- 
ple to Astarte, the consort of Baal, whose 
four hundred priests were entertained at the 
queen's own table. 

Fascinated by the seductive though de- 
grading allurements of the new religion, the 
people at first received it gladly. They soon 
felt the iron hand within the velvet glove. 
Jezebel would not rest until she had exter- 
minated the worship of J ehovah. The priests 
and worshipers of the old faith were hunted 
and slain, till it seemed that not one was 
left. The new religion appeared to be firmly 
established. Its ministers thronged the capi- 
tal. The queen had accomplished her pur- 
pose, when suddenly there appeared before 
Ahab, probably amid the court revels at Jez- 
reel, a stern, wild figure, clad in a mantle 
of untanned skins caught about the waist 
with a leather thong. He entered the royal 
presence alone, uttered the single sentence, 
" As the Lord, the God of Israel, liveth. 
before whom I stand, there shall not be dew 
nor rain these years, but according to my 
word," and vanished. No one could tell 



196 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



whence lie had come or whither he had gone, 
It was Elijah the prophet. The remainder 
of Ahab's reign was a duel between the man 
of God and the woman of Baal. Fidelity to 
facts will compel us to recognize that if the 
duel was not a drawn battle, Elijah did not 
win the victory. His career seems intended 
to teach the lesson effectually taught to him 
at last, lesson by receiving which he prepared 
the way before Christ, and earned the place 
upon the shining mount beside the Saviour, 
that not in the storm, and not in the light- 
ning, but in the still small voice lies the 
power of God ; that violence cannot establish 
the kingdom of Him who is a spirit, and 
must be worshiped in spirit and in truth. 

Alone in the strength of his faith the 
prophet faced the court, the monarch, the 
people, the priests of Baal, more terrible still 
the awful queen, and threatened them with 
the wrath of Jehovah. Three years of 
deadly drought, the memory of which is pre- 
served in the Tyrian annals of Menander 
as well as in the Bible, brought the timid 
Ahab and the fickle people suppliants to 
Elijah's feet. He demanded opportunity of 
testing whether Jehovah or Baal was God. 
You are familiar with the scene that ensued. 



SAMARIA, THE CITY OF POLITICIANS. 197 

On the eastern crest of Carmel — the spot is 
accurately known — the king, the court, and 
the multitude were assembled. The 450 
priests of Baal were before them. In plain 
view upon the west lay the Mediterranean, 
the water-way of Tyre. Conspicuous across 
the plain upon the east glittered the temple 
which proclaimed the general apostacy. Let 
this day prove who is God. 

The revolution which followed the victory 
of Elijah was sudden as it appeared to be 
complete. The priests of Baal, 450 in num- 
ber, were executed upon the spot, Ahab ap- 
proving and the multitude applauding. The 
fugitive of yesterday became the autocrat of 
to-day. 

In her palace at Jezreel the queen awaited 
intelligence from the contest. It came upon 
the lips of her husband. It told her that 
the prophets in whom she trusted were slain, 
the work of her life destroyed, the fickle 
people gone over to Elijah, her husband 
humbled before him, her life in peril from 
the revolution. Instantly the indomitable 
woman — every inch a queen despite her 
wickedness — sent word to Elijah in the 
hour of his victory, " So let the gods do to 
me, and more also, if I make not thy life as 



198 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



the life of one of them by to-morrow about 
this time." When Elijah received the mes- 
sage, " he arose and went for his life." He 
had treated the king as a silly child, he had 
met troop after troop of soldiers sent to ap- 
prehend him, and brought foes to their 
knees by a word or a gesture ; he had stood 
alone against the priests with the king and 
the nation behind them, but he fled at the 
threat of Jezebel. He fled to the wilder- 
ness, and there received that revelation which 
leavened the spirit of Hebrew prophecy by 
teaching it to look for Grod, neither in the 
whirlwind nor the storm, but in the still 
small voice. As Jezebel had slaughtered 
the prophets of Jehovah, and seen her ap- 
parent victory melt into defeat, so Elijah 
slew the prophets of Baal only to experience 
the same result. Centuries later the Sa- 
viour, passing through Samaria, was received 
with scorn by its inhabitants. The disci- 
ples, perhaps reminded by the sight of Car- 
mel of Elijah calling down fire upon the sol- 
diers of Ahaziah, asked permission to imi- 
tate that prophet's example. But the Master 
rebuked them. 44 Ye know not what spirit 
ye are of." 

Elijah gave place to another prophet, whose 



SAMARIA, THE CITY OF POLITICIANS. 199 



spirit was to his in some small degree as the 
spirit of Jesus was to that of the Baptist. 
On the same mountain where Elijah wrought 
the fiercest deed recorded of any prophet of 
Jehovah, Elisha met the mother coming to 
tell him her son was dead, and followed her 
to perform the tenderest. There the old dis- 
pensation ended and the new began. Elijah 
vanished and Elisha appeared. Touches of 
cruelty appear in the career of Elisha, as 
touches of tenderness are shown in that of 
Elijah. But the later prophet, counted by 
most historians the inferior, we are com- 
pelled to esteem immeasureably the greater 
of the two if we believe the words of Him 
who came not to destroy men's lives, but to 
save them. For Elisha' s history is the his- 
tory of one who went about doing good in 
the spirit of Him who bade us love our ene- 
mies, and do good to them that persecute us. 

IV. The last important stage in the rush 
of the nation toward ruin was the attempt 
of J ehu to rule by a pretense of religious 
reformation. A skillful soldier, an adroit 
and treacherous politician, his duplicity 
enabled him to retain the confidence of the 
reigning dynasty while he- prepared to de- 
stroy it. 



200 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



The instant rebellion appeared practicable, 
Jehu hastened at the head of the troops 
intrusted to his command by a confiding 
sovereign and seized the throne at J ezreel. 
The queen watched his approach from the 
window of her palace. His purpose was re- 
vealed by the detention of the messengers 
sent to ask his errand, and the murder of 
the king who went forth in confidence to 
welcome him. Jezebel was an aged woman, 
but indomitable still. Disdaining flight, she 
arrayed herself in the splendors of royalty 
and calmly waited for the traitor. As he 
drew near she said to him, in words which 
recalled the swift punishment of a former 
regicide in Israel, and were at once a threat 
and a command, " Had Zimri peace who 
slew his master ? " Exasperated by her fear- 
lessness or afraid of her influence if he 
spared her life an hour, he commanded the 
eunuchs in attendance to throw her from 
the window. 

With her the dynasty of Omri fell. It 
had been preserved so long, not by the 
worldly wisdom of its founder, whose only 
conception of national prosperity was suc- 
cessful trade, but by the energy of a woman 
supremely wicked, but supremely able be- 



SAMARIA, THE CITY OF POLITICIANS. 201 



cause she believed with all her heart and soul 
and mind and strength that her wickedness 
was the will of her gods. 

Jehu committed # the mistake usually made 
by men who have no principles when they 
try to imitate those who have. Despite the 
slaughter by Elijah, the Tyrian religion had 
again grown strong. Jehu copied the 
methods of Jezebel without possessing a 
trace of the spirit for Jehovah which had 
animated her for Baal. By a succession of 
treacheries unparalleled in any professed 
follower of Jehovah — exterminating on 
charges of heresy all who stood in the way 
of his ambition — he sustained himself in 
power for twenty-eight years. He is the 
earliest Jewish king whose name has been 
discovered in Assyrian inscriptions. On the 
black obelisk in the British Museum the 
ambassadors of Jehu appear with faces 
distinctively Jewish and wearing mantles 
fringed like that garment whose " hem " the 
woman touched when she was " straightway 
healed of her plague." They are bearing 
tribute to Shalmaneser and laying their 
master's sceptre at his feet. 1 

1 It would be rash to defend the wickedness of Jehu 
by quoting his divine commission. David also was, dur- 



202 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



With, the exception of a single reign, that 
of Jeroboam II., when the exhausted forces 
of the nation flickered like a dying candle 
into temporary brilliancy, the remaining 
history of the ten tribes is a quagmire of 
idolatry, debauchery, treason, and murder, 
accurately indicated in the prophet's lament 
that no one could teach Samaria or steady 
the drunkards of Ephraim, where all tables 
were full of vomit so that there was no place 

ing the life of his sovereign, anointed by divine author- 
ity. But David did not understand that he was meant 
to seize the throne by treachery and murder. The words 
addressed to Jehu by the messenger sent by Elisha to 
anoint him cannot be fairly attributed to Elisha, with 
whose character they are incongruous. What the mes- 
senger was told to do was to take Jehu into an inner 
chamber, anoint him, say £ ' thus saith the Lord, I have 
anointed thee to be king over Israel," and then open 
the door and flee away and tarry not. What the messen- 
ger did was to say what Elisha had bidden him, and then 
a good deal more quoted from Elijah, but applied as a 
rule of conduct to Jehu by no other apparent warrant 
than the messenger's own. To justify his atrocities Jehu 
afterwards appealed not to the authority of Elisha but to 
that of Elijah, by whom it appears he was not anointed. 
That there was at some time of Jehu's career a spark of 
worthy impulse is implied though not necessarily indi- 
cated by the promise that four generations of his family 
should possess the throne. 2 Kings x. 30. But what- 
ever of approval may be inferred from this and other 
passages is overbalanced by the weight of censure pro- 
nounced in the first chapter of Hosea. 



SAMARIA, THE CITY OF POLITICIANS. 203 



clean. In 721 B. c. they were swept out of 
human sight forever and a strange people 
planted in the land they had defiled. What 
became of them no man knows. But their 
history with the attendant warnings uttered 
by inspired prophets against the sins which 
caused their ruin forms the most valuable 
statesman's manual that exists, for it con- 
tains in miniature the rise, progress, and re- 
sults of all those dexterous devices by which 
politicians who are not statesmen endeavor 
to win or to perpetuate their power. The 
age of Elisha gave birth to that noble 
prophetic poem upon which small critics 
are accustomed to pour their frivolous con- 
tempt, but which stands without a rival, 
absolutely at the head of Old Testament 
literature, because it is most completely per- 
vaded with the spirit of Christ, the book 
of Jonah. Who wrote the book named 
Jonah or " The Dove" we do not know. 
Whether the poem embodies the facts of 
some prophet's visit to Nineveh is uncertain. 
But here the poem stands and has stood for 
more than twenty-five centuries boldly pro- 
claiming a statesmanship braver and more 
Christian by far than any statesman living 
or dead, pagan or Christian, has yet dared to 



204 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



practice or even to defend. For the book 
applies to all nations without reserve, even 
to nations which, are threatening one's own 
land with destruction, the master's command, 
" Love your enemies ; do good to them that 
persecute you." While Israel was bleeding 
from wounds dealt by foreigners, while the 
awful shadow of Assyria the destroyer was 
stealing nearer and nearer to blight his fa- 
therland, an Israelite wrote the book which 
teaches that the men of Nineveh are as dear 
to God as the men of Israel, and that the 
sins which threaten to destroy Assyria grieve 
the heart of God no less than those which 
are corrupting Samaria. Shall we suffer the 
voice of a book which proclaims such doc- 
trine to be silenced in our ears by brainless 
twitter about the size of fishes' throats and 
the length of time men may live beneath the 
water ? 



XII. 



SUSA, THE CITY OF THE SATRAPS. 

Susa, the Shushan of Scripture, was sit- 
uated almost directly east of Babylon, and 
north of the present mouth of the Tigris and 
Euphrates. It stood upon a rich bottom 
between the Kerkhah, the ancient Choaspes, 
and the Dizful, the ancient Koprates, at a 
point where those rivers approached within 
three or four miles of each other. At the 
beginning of its authentic history, Susa ap- 
pears as a place of great, though shadowy 
renown. The capital of Elam, it rivals in 
antiquity the oldest cities of Chaldaea. The 
annals of Assur-bani-pal inform us that the 
king of Elam invaded Babylonia more than 
two thousand years before Christ, and car- 
ried away the sacred images from Erech as 
trophies of his victory. By the Greeks, Susa 
was sometimes called Memnonium, as the re- 
puted home of Memnon, the mythical hero 
who fought for Priam in the Trojan war. 



206 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



and who seems in classic story to be identi- 
fied with an Ethiopia in Persia. 1 

The city comes distinctly and curiously to 
view about the year 650 b. c. Assur-bani- 
pal, the Sardanapalus of Greek story, was 
then king of Assyria. His annals are writ- 
ten upon cylinders found by Mr. Loftus. 
They bring before us the conqueror drawn 
by four captive kings, who are harnessed in 
chains before his war chariot, dragging it 
through the streets of Nineveh. He had 
come from the conquest of Susa, and one of 
the captive monarchs was its king. The an- 
nals give a minute account of the conquest 

l The recent startling discovery by M. Dieulafoy is 
known to me only by the report in the American J ournal 
of Archaeology. In the most ancient part of Susa, M. 
Dieulafoy reports that he has found portions of a panel of 
enameled bricks, representing a king, £ ' richly dressed 
in a green robe, overlaid with yellow, blue, and white 
embroidery, and in a tiger's skin ; and carrying a golden 
cane or lance. The most singular point is that the fig- 
ure, of which I have found the lower part of the fa<se, 
the beard, neck, and hands, is black. The lip is thin, the 
beard abundant, and the embroideries of the garments, 
most archaic in character, seem to be the work of Baby- 
lonian workmen. ' ' M. Dieulafoy, it is added, recognizes 
in this black king of Susa the characteristics of the Ethi- 
opian race, and thinks the picture older than any other 
relic yet discovered in the region. American Journal of 
Archaeology, January and March, 1886. 



SUSA, THE CITY OF THE SATRAPS. 207 



and destruction of the city, and tell us that 
its tower or citadel was "laid in marble" 
and " the top covered with shining bronze." 

Upon an alabaster panel placed by Assur- 
bani-pal in the palace of his grandfather, 
Sennacherib, was sculptured the picture of 
an Elaniite city inscribed " Madaktu." Mr. 
Loftus upon his return from excavating the 
mounds of Susa identified it as the map of 
that city without knowing that Mr. Layard 
had already done the same. The citadel, 
the palace, the royal gardens, the river, and 
the quarters of the common people all ap- 
peared in the positions assigned them in the 
diagrams of Mr. Loftus. It was startling 
to find, after excavating the naked mounds 
which conceal the ruins of Susa, a repre- 
sentation of the living city which had been 
carved on the panel of an Assyrian palace 
twenty-five centuries before. But the word 
"Madaktu" needed explanation. Mr. Lay- 
ard thought it the name of the district in 
which Susa stood, and both he and Mr. 
Loftus called attention to the fact that an 
inscription on the adjoining slab states that 
the Assyrians defeated the Susians "near 
the district of Madaktu, and near the city 
of Shushan." Dr. Vaux inclined to believe 



208 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



" that the sculptor, himself probably an As- 
syrian, has, in error, called it ' Madaktu ' 
instead of Susa." 

The decipherment of Assur-bani-pal's an- 
nals has shown that Madaktu and Susa were 
separate cities and that the identification of 
the map was a mistake. But that the mis- 
take occurred is a fact of great interest, be- 
cause it shows the similarity in plan and 
structure of the Elamite cities, and so con- 
firms other conclusions which have been 
drawn from their supposed resemblance to 
each other. 

The victories recorded in these sculptures 
from the palace of Sennacherib, and repeated 
in another set of slabs discovered by Mr. Eas- 
sam in the palace of Assur - bani - pal, were 
among the last won by Assyria. 

Soon after the sculptures were executed, 
Babylon became the world's capital. Dur- 
ing her short supremacy, Susa rose to be the 
second city in the empire, and Daniel, whose 
tomb, a modern structure, is still shown upon 
the bank of the Kerkhah near the ancient 
citadel, was probably for a time its gov- 
ernor. According to the Book of Daniel, 
the seer was at Susa when the vision of the 
He-goat advancing from the West appeared 



BUSA, THE CITY OF THE SATRAPS. 209 



to him. Under Cyrus, Susa began to share 
with Persepolis the supreme position which 
had been successively held by Nineveh and 
Babylon, and retained it until reduced to 
insignificance by Alexander. 

We will visit Susa in the year 479 b. c, 
when for nearly half a century it had been 
the chief city of the world. 

Cyrus founded the Persian Empire. When 
he had conquered Babylon, sent Zerubbabel 
thence with a company of Jewish exiles to 
rebuild their temple at Jerusalem, and ful- 
filled the glowing predictions of Isaiah by 
a long career of uninterrupted conquests, 
he made Susa a royal residence. After his 
death the power and wealth of the empire 
continued to increase, until its limits ex- 
tended far beyond those reached by Assyria, 
or even Babylon. They included a great part 
of India, the whole of western Asia, Egypt, 
Asia Minor, and most of the Ionian Islands. 
This vast domain Darius divided into prov- 
inces or satrapies. He appointed over each 
of them a ruler accountable to no one but 
himself, and thus earned the title given him, 
" The Great King," and " King of kings." 
Enormous revenues poured into his treasury. 
Gold and silver and precious stones became 
so abundant in his capital that Aristagoras, 



210 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



who appears to have visited the place and 
been dazzled by its splendor, told the king 
of Sparta that the man who conquered Susa 
might rival Jove himself in wealth and 
power. One of the monarch's beds — per- 
haps the bed on which his son and succes- 
sor Ahashuerus lay that memorable night 
when, because the king could not sleep, " he 
commanded to bring the book of records of 
the chronicles, and they were read before the 
king " — rested on a frame of solid gold. 
Over its head twined a vine, also of solid 
gold, bearing clusters of emeralds, rubies, and 
diamonds, representing grapes, green, and 
red, and white. It was made by Theodore 
of Samos, said to have been the most cele- 
brated goldsmith of antiquity. Here also 
apparently stood a golden plane-tree, from 
the hand of the same artist. Darius appears 
to have been the earliest coiner of gold and 
silver. The gold darics, named after him, 
each showed the figure of an archer with 
drawn bow, and those archers conquered 
both Athens and Sparta after they had suc- 
cessfully repelled every other assailant the 
" Great King " could send against them. 

Eleven years before we shall enter Susa, 
Darius experienced his first humiliation. In 



SUSA, THE CITY OF TEE SATRAPS. 211 



490 b. C. his army was shattered at Mara- 
thon. Enraged by that defeat, he spent the 
remainder of his life preparing to avenge it. 
Each day, we are told, a slave was required 
to keep his fury aflame by whispering in his 
ear as he reclined at table, " Remember Ath- 
ens ! " Before his death Xerxes, his son 
and successor, had been pledged to expiate 
his father's disgrace by the subjugation of 
Greece. 

Classic history informs us that in the third 
year of his reign Xerxes assembled the sa- 
traps of the empire at Susa to complete ar- 
rangements for the contemplated invasion. 

The Bible tells us that in the third year 
of his reign Ahasuerus convened the rulers 
of his provinces at Shushan. 

Classic history informs us that in the sev- 
enth year of his reign Xerxes returned de- 
feated to Susa, and sought consolation in 
the pleasures of the harem. 

The Bible tells us that in the seventh year 
of his reign Ahasuerus, after the empire had 
been searched for its loveliest women, mar- 
ried Esther. 

Classic history informs us that Xerxes 
drained his dominions to furnish and re- 
place treasures squandered in unsuccessful 
war. 



212 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



The Bible tells us that Ahasuerus allowed 
his prime minister to pass sentence of death 
upon a wealthy race among his subjects in 
order to swell the royal revenues, and that 
he " laid a tribute upon the land and upon 
the isles of the sea." 

The length of time between the divorce 
and the marriage is explained by the events 
narrated by the Greek historians, and cunei- 
form scholars add, with entire confidence, 
that Ahasuerus is Hebrew for the Persian 
equivalent of the Greek word Xerxes. 

Even a careless reader of the Book of Es- 
ther can scarcely fail to observe the change 
which appears in Xerxes' treatment and es- 
timate of woman, between his repudiation of 
Yashti and his marriage to Esther. Vashti 
was his toy, Esther his friend and counselor. 

Four years elapsed between the divorce 
and the marriage. During that period 
Xerxes' eyes and thoughts were occupied 
with Greece. The great convention at Susa, 
during which Vashti was repudiated for dis- 
obeying a degrading command given by her 
husband in a drunken whim, was followed 
by the most memorable campaign of history, 
the campaign of Thermopylae and Salamis. 
When Xerxes returned to Susa, he had 



8 USA, THE CITY OF THE SATRAPS. 213 

spent four years in contact, more or less im- 
mediate, with Grecian sentiment, and two in 
a thoroughly Grecian atmosphere. 

Those Greeks whom the " King of kings " 
went forth so confidently to enslave appreci- 
ated, more correctly than any other men then 
living, the worth and influence of woman, 
and treated her with a more just considera- 
tion. The Greek Bible was chiefly composed 
of two sacred poems. One of them, the Il- 
iad, was the memorial of a war waged by the 
noblest of their race to avenge the honor of 
an outraged husband. It told how ten years 
of woes and the ruin of the guilty nation had 
been caused by a wife's infidelity. The other 
sacred poem, the Odyssey, showed how ten 
years of woes had been converted into bless- 
ing by the mutual fidelities of a wife, a hus- 
band, and a son. Both poems present true 
women, not as the toys, but the companions and 
counselors of man. To this truth the Greeks 
alone among nations were still bearing wit- 
ness. The most foolish of men must learn 
something from four years in such a school. 
Did not Xerxes learn how a Spartan woman 
had detected and taught the baffled Spartan 
men to understand the dexterous device by 
means of which a friend of Greece had sent 



214 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



early intelligence of the Persians' plans, and 
so had saved her country by her superior sa- 
gacity? Did he not see the husbands and 
fathers of those women who had sent them 
to battle with the injunction, " Return to us 
bearing your shields, or borne upon them," 
fighting as he had not conceived it possible 
for men to fight ? His own soldiers were 
driven to battle by scourges of raw bull's 
hide, while a line of selected guards followed 
behind them with drawn swords to slaughter 
all who fled ; but when the Three Hundred, 
immovable as the rocks between which they 
stood, held at bay his million, and though sur- 
rounded could not be conquered, he learned 
that Greeks fought thus because their women 
would not speak even to the son or husband 
who had shown his back to a foe. Before 
the battle of Salamis, a woman, Artemisia, 
Xerxes' own ally, stood alone in opposing 
the plan adopted by himself and approved 
by all his generals. That plan, pursued 
against her protest, ended in irreparable dis- 
aster. This woman fought so well at Sala- 
mis that Xerxes, watching from the brow of 
^Egaleos the destruction of his ships, ex- 
claimed, " My men fight like women, and 
my women like men ! " He was glad after 



SUSA, THE CITY OF THE SATRAPS. 215 



that to follow her advice, for he had already 
been nearly ruined by rejecting it, and 
showed his appreciation of her wisdom by 
intrusting his sons to her care. Thus, when 
Xerxes returned to Susa and found Esther, 
he had been prepared to appreciate a noble 
woman, so far, at least, as a man so foolish 
and so selfish could be taught that lesson. 

We have reached the year 479, and will 
follow the king to his capital. 

A little east of the Kerkhah or Choaspes 
river stood a rectangular platform of earth 
and masonry, its length from north to south 
half its breadth. Walls of brick and stone 
clamped with iron inclosed a solid filling of 
earth and gravel. The surface, an area of 
sixty acres, undulated in elevations varying 
from forty to seventy feet above the plain, 
and the entire mass was threaded with drains 
and water conduits. This was the broad 
pedestal upon which, amid trees and gar- 
dens, the royal residences stood. Some such 
structure was probably the original of Nebu- 
chadnezzar's celebrated hanging gardens. 
A little west, probably in the line of the 
western wall, and upon the river bank — the 
river channel has changed within historic 
times — on a smaller but higher platform, 



216 ANCIENT CITIES. 



triangular in shape, stood the citadel. East 
of the palace platform lay the city, on a 
broad foundation elevated a few feet above 
the plain. 

Northwest of the great central mound 
which lay between the city and the citadel, 
Darius erected a fourth platform similar to 
that occupied by the royal grounds, but 
higher, half the size and square in outline. 
Here, inscriptions found upon the pedestals 
of broken and long-buried columns tell us 
that Darius built and Xerxes occupied the 
palace I would have you visit. It was un- 
like any structure ever seen outside of Persia, 
and combined in < itself characteristics of 
Egyptian, Assyrian, and Greek architecture. 
Not a trace of the edifice remains above the 
ground, yet, for reasons which it may be in- 
teresting to understand, something of its 
general appearance is known. The loca- 
tions of one or two pedestals of columns 
were discovered by accident, but these were 
not sufficient to justify even a conjecture of 
the plan of the building. Mr. Loftus re- 
flected that it was thought to have been built 
in the time of Darius, and very probably 
might have resembled another palace of that 
monarch of which the ruins are still standing 



SUSA, THE CITY OF THE SATRAPS. 217 

at Persepolis. He assumed that the two 
buildings were duplicates. Acting upon 
that hypothesis, he started from one of the 
pedestals already excavated, ran his trenches 
with mathematical precision to the points 
where other columns must have stood if his 
theory proved correct — found every pedes- 
tal almost exactly where he expected it ; 
found fragments of shafts and capitals simi- 
lar to those at Persepolis, and so demonstra- 
ted that to reconstruct the palace of Susa we 
have only to modify that of Persepolis. 

The ruins of the structure at Persepolis 
are meagre. Only the ground-plan with the 
positions and appearance of the columns is 
certain. Beginning with these, adopting 
what has been with extreme probability in- 
ferred by competent judges, noting the few 
differences in details which excavations have 
disclosed, but introducing no feature not jus- 
tified by considerations which seem to me 
sufficient, I will describe the summer palace 
of Xerxes at Susa as I believe it appeared. 

Elevated a few feet above the vast mound- 
platform already described was a rectangu- 
lar floor paved with variegated marbles and 
measuring 350 by 250 feet, if we discard odd 
numbers. It was reached by a low marble 



218 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



terrace of steps, flanked with Assyrian sculp- 
tures. Upon each of three sides of this 
broad and beautiful floor stood a colonnade. 
The colonnades did not fence the sides along 
their whole extent, but occupied only their 
central portions and so left open the corners 
of the square. Each column in these three 
colonnades, of pale blue marble with fluted 
shaft and elaborate capital, rose sixty feet 
above the floor and was surmounted by two 
half-bulls facing in opposite directions, so 
that the ends of the roof beams rested in the 
hollows upon their backs. Instead of walls, 
curtains of diverse colors hung from silver 
rings inserted in the capitals. 

Near the middle of the south line of the 
great marble pavement, and equidistant from 
the three colonnades, stood a square group 
of thirty - six columns similar to those 
already described, equidistant from each 
other and rising like forest trees. This 
group was roofed, and its sides were pro- 
tected by curtains, like those upon the colon- 
nades, which could be adjusted at pleasure 
to exclude the sun or admit the breeze. 
The colonnades were probably the waiting- 
rooms or antechambers, the central group of 
columns the throne room. Those seeking 



SUSA, TEE CITY OF THE SATE APS. 219 



audience of the monarch would have to cross 
the open space between the colonnades and 
the throne room, a distance of sixty feet, in 
full view of armed guards, whose duty it was 
to arrest and remove for instant execution 
every one who crossed the court unsum- 
moned, though it should be the queen her- 
self, unless the royal sceptre was extended 
in token of pardon or reprieve. 

The sculptures have furnished us a pic- 
ture of Xerxes seated upon his throne. The 
colors can be supplied from classic sources. 
The throne, which resembles a high-backed 
chair, is set in a frame* - of gold. The mon- 
arch wears yellow boots with pointed toes 
not unlike those found upon the sculptured 
rocks of Asia Minor, crimson trousers, and a 
flowing mantel of purple embroidered with 
gold. Instead of a crown, a square cap, 
with a fillet of white spotted with blue, the 
royal colors of Persia and worn only by the 
king, rests upon his head. His right hand 
grasps the sceptre, a golden rod five feet 
long and topped with a golden apple. His 
left holds a gold goblet, and behind him an 
attendant stands with an enormous fan of 
feathers. 

No walls intercept his view. To his left, 



220 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



beyond the royal gardens, beyond the cita- 
del, beyond the river, fringed with a broad 
belt of the fragrant iris which gave to the 
city its name Shushan, the Lily, and still 
grows in great abundance around its ruins, a 
vast sea of golden grain, dotted with islands 
of palm, orange, and lemon trees, stretches 
to a distant shore-line of blue mountains. 
Behind him and nearly on a level with him- 
self, lie the old palace grounds and build- 
ings. On the east from the base of his lofty 
lookout extends the city. There he may see 
men rushing w T ildly through the streets, 
throwing handfuls of dust into the air, rend- 
ing their garments, and practicing all those 
demonstrations by which Orientals express 
grief and dismay. Unless his own musicians 
drown the cries, he hears the shrill screams, 
" Woe ! woe ! woe ! woe to the sons of Abra- 
ham ! woe to the children of Israel." For 
a decree has gone forth that all of Jewish 
lineage shall be slain, and while the palace 
of Shushan is at ease the " city Shushan is 
perplexed." 

But the monarch's gaze is arrested by the 
figure of a woman crossing the open court 
toward the throne room. She is radiantly 
beautiful, and every art of the toilet has 



SUSA, THE CITY OF THE SATRAPS. 221 

been employed to increase her beauty, for 
she knows it is the single thread upon which 
her life and the lives of her people depend. 
Therefore she has put on her royal apparel 
and advances shining in all the lustre of that 
loveliness which may have caused her name 
to be changed from Hadassah, the myrtle, 
to Esther, the star. 

While we recall the immense results of 
that interview, let us not forget the experi- 
ence which had educated Xerxes not only 
to admire the grace, but to appreciate the 
mind and character of a wise and noble 
woman. 

Many scholars who do not regard the 
Book of Esther as authentic history, still 
think that it contains a picture, the most 
vivid and accurate that exists, of the Per- 
sian court in the age of Xerxes. 

Without this book it is scarcely possible 
to account for the position occupied by the 
Jews in the Persian Empire, and at the court 
of Artaxerxes in the age of Nehemiah. 
Without it, Jewish annals between the first 
rebuilding of the temple and the work of 
Ezra and Nehemiah are a blank. At the ac- 
cession of Artaxerxes only a small colony of 
the chosen people resided at Jerusalem. The 



222 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



vast majority of their race were still in exile. 
Many lived at Babylon, many at Susa. They 
held positions of influence and authority; 
they possessed great wealth, and some of 
them shared the counsels of the king. They 
thought of their brethren at J erusalem some- 
what as Englishmen thought of Massachu- 
setts in early colonial times. It was Arta- 
xerxes who sent Ezra from Babylon, and 
Nehemiah from Susa, with large reinforce- 
ments of men and treasure to reestablish the 
Jewish nation. As Babylon was the de- 
stroyer, Persia was the savior of the chosen 
people, and from Susa came the influences 
which restored to the world, after they ap- 
peared to have been lost forever, not only 
Moses and the prophets, but the many other 
blessings inherited from Jerusalem. 

The history of Persia was a long note, of 
which the career of Alexander was a brief 
answering echo. That history began in a 
mountain district which formed a smaller part 
of Asia than does Switzerland of Europe. 
With his hardy mountaineers Cyrus attacked 
whom he would, and no one was found who 
could stand before him. Rapidly he subju- 
gated the countless nationalities of which he 
formed the great Persian Empire, and his 



8 USA, THE CITY OF THE SATRAPS. 223 



successors were long able to sustain the 
greatness he had given them. When luxury 
and pride had completed their work, Xerxes 
invaded Greece with a host which the calm 
and judicial Grote allows us to estimate at 
nearly two millions, and made less perma- 
nent impression than foam upon a rock. 

Two centuries later another mountaineer 
set forth to capture Susa. He had less 
than thirty-five thousand soldiers, but each 
of them had been trained to endure hard- 
ness, to trust his comrades, to choose death 
before defeat, and to obey orders. At Issus 
their way was blocked by 600,000, at Gau- 
gamela by 1,000,000 armed men. Without 
checking its course, the phalanx plowed 
through them, sending the opposing hosts in 
fine spray, right and left, as a swiftly moving 
ship throws the jets from her cut-water. 
Pausing only long enough to gather the 
treasure dropped by Darius as he fled from 
Issus, and to return in safety to their lord 
the royal ladies there deserted ; stopping at 
Tyre to fight real soldiers ; at Jerusalem to 
confer with real men, and in Egypt to be 
told he was a god ; halting while his gen- 
eral brought the chests of Persian treasure 
abandoned at Damascus ; stopping scarcely 



224 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



long enough to count the gold captured at 
Babylon, Alexander advanced to Susa, where 
sixty million dollars awaited him, and Per- 
sepolis, where he found a hundred and thirty 
million more. Never has any other con- 
queror been opposed by armies so numerous, 
wealth so prodigious and manhood so feeble. 
It is scarcely strange that he believed him- 
self a god, not because he was so great, but 
because other men were so little. Insatiable 
of conquest, he descended to India. There 
he found one who told him what these things 
meant. They meant, not that Alexander 
was a god, but something very different. 
Gods should be omnipresent in some small 
measure. To emphasize that fact, Calanus 
brought the shriveled bull's-hide, laid it be- 
fore Alexander- Amnion, and trod upon its 
edge. Watch, O Alexander - Ammon, how 
the opposite edge flies upward. 

That is all the sage, sought by the con- 
queror to flatter his vanity, will say. But 
the symbol declares sharply, " While you 
stand at Susa, take care for Macedon." 
Never was prediction more accurately ful- 
filled. 

It is the last ten years of Alexander's life 
which seem like a short, sharp echo of the 



SUSA, THE CITY OF THE SATRAPS. 225 



history of Persia. At twenty-three a noble 
youth, generous, brave, temperate, he left 
the shores' of Greece. At thirty-three, cor- 
rupted by success and wealth greater than 
have ever been given in equal measure to 
any other of our race, whimsical as Xerxes, 
and debauched as Persian kings 5 he died at 
Babylon the drunkard's death. 

The invasion of Alexander crushed the 
empire which Cyrus had founded. The in- 
fluence of Greece superseding that of Persia 
permeated Egypt and the Orient. The cunei- 
form alphabet, though employed to some ex- 
tent as late as the first century of our era, 
gradually fell into disuse, and even Chal- 
daean priests began to write in the language 
of the Macedonian. The empire of Cyrus 
endured two centuries, that of Alexander 
perished in a night. As the Hebrew 
prophet had distinctly foreseen, the impor- 
tant work of Cyrus and his successors was 
to replant, in its native soil, the vine which 
once had flourished at Jerusalem. The im- 
portant work of Alexander was to prepare 
the way by which the fruits of that vine 
should be distributed among mankind. The 
commissions by which both conquerors were 
empowered we copy from the book of Isaiah. 
They read as follows : — 



t 



226 ANCIENT CITIES. 

" Thus saitli the Lord, . . . that confirineth 
the word of his servant, and performeth the 
counsel of his messengers ; . . . that saith of 
Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform 
all my pleasure : even saying to Jerusalem, 
Thou shall be built; and to the temple, Thy 
foundation shall be laid. Thus saith the 
Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, . . . For Jacob 
my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I 
have even called thee by thy name : I have 
surnamed thee, though thou hast not known 
me. . . . That they may know from the rising 
of the sun, and from the west, that there is 
none beside me. I am the Lord, and there 
is none else." 

" The grass withereth, the flower fadeth : 
but the word of our God shall stand forever. 
O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee 
up into the high mountain : . . . lift up thy 
voice with strength ! " 



XIII. 



JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF THE PHARI- 
SEES. 

The present Jerusalem stands over the 
ancient city upon a mass of debris which 
varies between twenty and one hundred, and 
averages more than thirty feet in depth. 
But the original outlines are revealed in the 
overlying mould as the bones of a limb in 
the contours of the flesh. Within an area 
of two hundred acres, hundreds of observa- 
tions of the old levels have been taken by 
means of shafts sunk to the bed rock, and 
galleries run in various directions. The 
conclusions reached have been tested by 
careful comparison with descriptions given 
in the Bible and by profane writers. It is, 
therefore, possible to realize with consider- 
able accuracy and distinctness the appear- 
ance of the city in the time of Christ. 

It was shaped like a two-pronged tooth, 
of which the crown was a projection from 
the south line of the Judsean hills, and the 



228 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



prongs extended southward. The west prong 
bulged westward, and the valley bounding it 
on the west and curving eastward around its 
point was called Hinnom. The depression 
between the prongs, shallower but steeper 
than Hinnom, was the Tyropoean, or Valley 
of the Cheesemongers. The valley which 
bounded the east prong on the east ran a 
very little east of south, entered the valley 
of Hinnom south of the east line of the city, 
and was named Kedron. From their junc- 
tion the three valleys ran as one eastward 
toward the Jordan. Irregularities of out- 
line gave the city a shape which might sug- 
gest that of a diamond with the longer 
diagonal running from northeast to south- 
west. That longest diagonal was less than a 
mile, the circuit of the walls was less than 
three, and the area of the city, exclusive of 
the temple inclosure, was two hundred and 
ten acres. 

The eastern ridge, or prong, was formed by 
three eminences. The south and lowest of 
these, which sloped upward from the junc- 
tion of the three valleys, and lay outside the 
city walls, was Ophel. Upon it the palace 
of Solomon probably stood. The higher 
elevation, directly north of Ophel, with a 



JERUSALEM, TEE CITY OF PHARISEES. 229 



dome-shaped crest, was Mount Moriah. A 
rectangle of enormous walls, varying in depth 
between thirty and a hundred and seventy 
feet, was built from the bed rock, at the 
base of the dome, to a level with its summit. 
The space between these walls and the hill 
they inclosed, filled in, formed the temple 
inclosure. It was nearly a mile in circuit, 
and a part, probably the greater part of the 
east side rising from the Kedron valley, was 
terraced with vines and flowers. North of 
Mount Moriah, separated from it by a sharp 
ravine, which is now filled up, defended by 
the city wall which surmounted a precipice, 
adorned with gardens, and occupied by resi- 
dences of the wealthy, was Bezetha, or new 
town. 

The western ridge was higher than the 
eastern. Due west of Mount Moriah, across 
the Tyropoean valley, which was the com- 
mercial centre of the city, it swelled into the 
rounded eminence called Acra. South of 
Acra and divided from it by a ravine, which 
is now filled up, and directly west of Ophel 
stood Mount Zion, the highest elevation in 
Jerusalem. It rose above the temple hill, 
more than a hundred feet. 

On the crest of Zion, Herod the Great 



230 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



erected the palace in which Christ stood 
before Pilate. It was of vast size, and built 
wholly of white marble. Some of its innu- 
merable apartments were paneled and ceiled 
with variegated marbles, thickly set with 
precious stones. The banqueting hall af- 
forded room for the couches of three hun- 
dred guests. The surrounding gardens cov- 
ered the greater part of Ziom They were 
adorned with fountains and artificial water- 
courses, which leaped in cascades, or rested 
in ornamental fish-ponds, and were pro- 
fusedly decorated with those pagan statues 
which exasperated the religious sentiment 
Herod built the temple upon Mount Moriah 
to appease. The whole palace grounds were 
inclosed by fortified walls, also of white 
marble, and forty-five feet in height. The 
city walls ran a little west of these, and near 
them on the north arose the three celebrated 
towers built by Herod, and named by him 
Hippicus, Phasaelus, and Mariamne. Each 
was at once a sumptuous palace and a forti- 
fied castle. They were built of blocks of 
white marble so deftly fitted to each other 
that their lines of junction were said to be 
scarcely visible. 

We have named the most striking objects 



JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF PHARISEES. 231 

in Jerusalem, when the Master viewed it 
the last week of His life. He was standing 
upon the Mount of Olives, which formed the 
east bank of the Kedron, and rose several 
hundred feet above the city. Directly be- 
neath him lay the deep valley. Its sides 
were terraced with vines and flowers, and 
its surface covered with gardens, one of 
which was called Gethsemane. Across the 
valley the temple hill, crowned with buildings 
of dazzling white, surmounted with count- 
less points of burnished metal, appeared 
" like a mountain of snow fretted with 
gold." A little farther west and south ap- 
peared the palace and gardens of Herod, 
flanged upon the north by the three gor- 
geous castles of white marble. Beyond this 
glittering centre, which might seem a jeweled 
broach, pinning to earth a variegated man- 
tle, gardens, orchards, vineyards, extended 
far as the eye could see. They were thronged 
with hundreds of thousands of men, women, 
and children, moving about with the vivacity 
of their Christmas season, for it was the 
Passover, and more than a million visitors 
had come to celebrate the feast. This was 
the brilliant and inspiring view spread be- 
fore the gaze of the disciples when the Mas- 



232 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



ter " drew near and beheld the city and 
wept over it." For he discovered, what in 
less than forty years other eyes should also 
see, every edifice in sight razed to the 
ground ; of the temple buildings not one 
stone left upon another ; the site they cover 
plowed, and the furrows sown with salt ; 
every garden made a desert ; every tree cut 
down ; in the places of those which stand in 
Gethsemane, and of the vines which terrace 
the slopes of Kedron, hundreds of wooden 
crosses, and upon every cross one of his 
countrymen stretched in the agonies of cru- 
cifixion, while the sun is darkened by the 
vultures hovering over them. " O Jerusa- 
lem ! Jerusalem ! " 

The Bible gives the history of Jerusalem 
from the day when David fixed his residence 
upon Mount Zion to the time when the 
Jews who had been sent back from Babylon 
by Cyrus with Zerubbabel to rebuild their 
temple began a new lease of national life 
under Ezra and Nehemiah. After that the 
Bible is silent until it begins to describe the 
birth of Christ. 

The history of Nehemiah ends about 433 
B. c. A century later Alexander received 
the Jews under his protection. They con- 



JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF PHARISEES, 233 

tinued under Greek influence, shuttlecocked 
between Egypt and Syria for more than 
a century and a half. Gradually Greek 
manners crept into Jerusalem, until their 
insidious influence threatened to obliterate 
the religion of the chosen people. That re- 
sult seemed near, when it was prevented by 
the violent endeavors of one man to acceler- 
ate it. Near the middle of the second cen- 
tury before Christ, Antiochus Epiphanes, a 
usurping and half-mad king of Syria, under- 
took to force the J ews to a complete renun- 
ciation of the religion they were gradually 
renouncing of their own accord. He was 
actuated in part by a brutal love of tyranny, 
in part by the hope of bringing Jerusalem 
into closer political relations with the rest of 
his dominions, through a community of faith, 
but chiefly by a desire to possess the im- 
mense treasures in the temple. He abol- 
ished the laws of Moses, prohibited their 
practice, desecrated the temple by offering 
swine's flesh upon the altar and setting up 
a statue of Jupiter in the Holy of Holies, 
and required every J ew to offer pagan sac- 
rifice under penalty of death for disobedi- 
ence. 

At Modin, some miles from Jerusalem, 



234 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



lived an old man named Matthias. He had 
retired, with his five stalwart sons, from Je- 
rusalem to avoid sight of the profanations 
practiced there. When the Syrian official 
visited Modin to compel obedience to the 
edict of Antiochus, Matthias, seized with 
uncontrollable fury as he saw the pagan ap- 
proach to consecrate the altar of idolatry, 
slew him on the spot. This murder inau- 
gurated a revolution, which made the Jews 
once more an independent nation. J udas, 
named Maceabaeus, or the Hammerer, a son 
of Matthias, become the Jewish William 
Tell, and his memory is still preserved as 
that of the only Jewish warrior who deserves 
to rank with Joshua. He defeated the ar- 
mies sent against him, though they outnum- 
bered his own ten to one. Under his rule, 
and that of his four brothers, the Jews re- 
tained their independence. Eventually, how- 
ever, they were compelled to seek the alli- 
ance of Eome. That step prepared for the 
intervention of Pompey, who was asked to 
arbitrate between two rival claimants of 
the high-priesthood. Using the occasion to 
advance his own ambition, Pompey besieged 
and captured Jerusalem, 63 b. c. Thence- 
forth it remained nominally independent, 



JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF PHARISEES. 235 

but virtually a feudatory of Rome, until the 
birth of Christ. Soon after that it became 
nominally, as it had been virtually, a Roman 
province, and at the time of the crucifixion 
was governed by a Roman procurator. 

The patriots who struck for religious lib- 
erty under J udas Maccabeus were the Puri- 
tans of Palestine. Their battle-cry was, 
" God and our native land." Their consti- 
tution was not only the Mosaic law, but the 
minutest details of the ritual observances 
which had been engrafted upon it. They 
were called " Pharisees," or " Separatists,' r 
to distinguish them from other Jews less 
scrupulous and less patriotic. Gradually 
they passed through that experience so viv- 
idly portrayed in Walter Scott's portrait of 
Balfour of Burleigh. Their religious and 
patriotic ardor petrified into an arrogant 
and cruel conceit. For the letter and ex- 
ternal forms of their religion they stood like 
a rock. For its spirit they ceased to care a 
jot. In the time of Christ they had become 
the popular leaders, had inoculated the peo- 
ple with their own spirit, and were steadily 
urging them forward toward the hopeless 
struggle with Rome. They scrutinized Christ 
so long as they hoped he could be used as 



236 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



a military captain, a second Judas Macca- 
bseus, and crucified him when they discov- 
ered their mistake. They were responsible 
for the horrors of the siege by Titus. The 
details of that siege are familiar. We will 
not repeat them. It is not needful to de- 
scribe again famished parents feeding upon 
the bodies of their children, murdered by 
their own hands, and fighting each other 
for the fragments of the terrible feast. 
That siege was not only the most awful of 
the twenty-one recorded sieges of Jerusalem, 
but it greatly surpassed in horror any other 
known to history. The number of Jews 
who perished in it by famine and the sword 
is estimated at more than 1,100,000. Nine- 
ty-seven thousand were taken prisoners. 
" The entire nation," says Ewald, " was 
really by this siege affixed to the cross,- only 
there was not wood enough at hand for such 
wholesale crucifixion." " Of the prisoners, 
some were obliged to slay each other as 
gladiators, or to be torn by wild beasts in 
the arena. Others were doomed to un- 
wholesome labor as slaves in Egypt. And 
all Israelites without distinction were then 
with one blow made the scorn of the whole 
world, whilst only a short time before they 



JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF PHARISEES. 237 

had supposed that they had a right to de- 
spise or rule the world." 

Nothing was left of the city but the naked 
hills, and the valleys between these were 
largely filled by the conquerors, to prevent 
their being fortified again. 

The important memories of Jerusalem all 
rest upon the three hills, Mount Moriah in 
the eastern ridge, Zion and Acra in the 
western. 

I. Mount Moriah, or the " Mount of Vis- 
ion." Here the tradition accepted by Jo- 
sephus, the Jewish Targums, and by some 
living scholars of repute, affirms that Abra- 
ham placed the wood upon which he meant 
to offer Isaac. Here, certainly, was the 
threshing floor of Oman, where the devas- 
tating angel paused when the pestilence was 
arrested, and here David erected an altar to 
perpetuate the memory of that deliverance. 
Here, upon the inclosure already described, 
stood successively the temple of Solomon, 
the temple of Zerubbabel, and that built by 
Herod, in which Jesus taught. At the 
southeast angle of the stupendous walls 
which include the vast quadrangle sur- 
mounted by the temple buildings, and more 
than seventy feet beneath the present sur- 



238 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



face of the Kedron valley, from which those 
walls arise, lies the foundation stone. The 
great stone, fourteen feet long and three feet 
eight inches high, is sunk fourteen inches into 
the bed rock. It is sharply squared, pol- 
ished, and finely faced. It was laid for Sol- 
omon, it is believed, three thousand years 
ago, and may have been in Peter's mind 
when he wrote, " Behold, I lay in Zion a 
corner-stone, elect, precious." Three feet 
from it, cut in the bed rock, is a small hole, 
a foot broad and a foot deep, in which was 
found a small earthen jar, which Dr. Birch 
recognized as of Egyptian, but which others 
think, with greater probability, of Phoeni- 
cian pattern. It was probably filled with 
the holy oil of consecration, and placed by 
Solomon with imposing ceremonies in the 
place where the excavators found it, as a 
part of the ritual with which the founda- 
tion/ of the temple were laid. Directly 
above this corner-stone the top of the clois- 
ter wall rose in the time of Christ, three 
hundred feet sheer, and here was perhaps 
the spot referred to in the temptation, as 
" the pinnacle." Fifty yards north of the 
southeast angle, built into modern masonry, 
the fragment of a column projects over 



JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF PHARISEES. 239 



the Kedron, and upon it Mohammedans 
believe their prophet will sit when, on the 
last day, he returns for the last judgment, 
and all nations are gathered before him 
in the valley beneath. The entire temple 
hill is honey-combed with drains, water con- 
duits, cisterns, of which last enough have 
been explored to contain 11,000,000 gallons, 
and chambers whose uses are not known. 
A shaft sunk outside the great walls near 
their southwest angle disclosed an ancient 
pavement, twenty-three feet below the pres- 
ent surface, and twenty feet beneath that 
a second pavement. There, amid fragments 
of pottery and glass, a gentleman's seal was 
found. It is about the size worn to-day in 
gentlemen's rings and is a finely grained 
black stone, inscribed " Haggai, the son of 
Shebnaiah." The letters resemble those 
employed during the age of the captivity in 
Babylon. The prophet Haggai was one of 
the exiles who returned with Zerubbabel. 
" He is," says Mr. King, " the only one of 
the minor prophets who mentions a signet," 
and one can imagine him holding the ring 
upon his finger before his leader's eyes, to 
emphasize the words which close the book 
of the prophecy which has come down to 



240 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



us under his name : "I will take thee, O 
Zerubbabel, my servant, the son of Sheal- 
tiel, saith the Lord, and will make thee as 
a signet ; for I have chosen thee, saith the 
Lord of hosts." 

A few years after the destruction of J eru- 
salem by Titus, Hadrian planted a Roman 
colony upon its site. He built a temple to 
J upiter where the temple of J ehovah had 
stood, prohibited Jews from coming within 
sight of the place upon penalty of death, and 
called the city iElia Capitolina. Two cen- 
turies later Constantine made Jerusalem the 
devotional centre of Christianity as it had 
once been of Judaism. 

After a single intervening reign, Constan- 
tine was succeeded by the Emperor Julian. 
The aim of Julian's life was the overthrow 
of Christianity and the restoration of pagan- 
ism. He recognized in the Jews the bitter 
opponents of the religion he wished to de- 
stroy. For that reason he recalled them to 
Jerusalem and encouraged them to rebuild 
their temple. They responded with fierce 
alacrity. They crowded Jerusalem. Day 
and night the work of reconstruction pro- 
ceeded. All classes and ages were animated 
by a common enthusiasm,, The rich worked 



JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF PHARISEES. 241 



with picks or spades of silver to emphasize 
their zeal. Wealthy ladies carried rubbish 
in mantles of silk and purple and in bas- 
kets made of silver. Old men and even the 
blind were led tottering among the ruins, and 
little children were carried by their parents 
and their hands filled with pebbles that all 
might share the blessings expected upon an 
enterprise so holy. Much of the rubbish 
had been removed, when suddenly, we are 
told by both Christian and pagan historians, 
the work was miraculously stopped. Flames 
burst from the ground, balls of fire shot 
through the air or rolled along the earth and 
exploded with a sound of thunder. The sign 
of the cross appeared on every side in fire. 
No historian of repute, 1 believe, has ven- 
tured to deny the reality of this mysterious 
interruption. The evidence is too over- 
whelming. We are able at last to explain 
its origin. The temple hill is honey-combed 
with caverns. The air long imprisoned 
within them had become explosive and phos- 
phorescent, and when the sparks struck by 
pick or spade touched these reservoirs of im- 
flammable gases, explosions ensued, and the 
high-wrought imaginations of superstitious 
men, ignorant of natural laws, completed the 
miracle. 



242 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



In 637 A. D. the Saracens gained posses- 
sion of the city. They raised the mosque of 
Omar on the summit of the temple inclo- 
sure, known as the Dome of the Rock. This 
highest point of Mount Moriah is called the 
Sakhra. It rises five feet through the marble 
pavement of the mosque, and the pavement 
itself is twelve feet higher than the surround- 
ing surface of the hill. The Sakhra is per- 
forated by an opening leading into the drain 
along which there is reason to believe the 
blood shed in J ewish sacrifices was conducted 
into the Kedron. It probably marks the 
spot where the altar to Jehovah stood. It 
is venerated by Mohammedans as the spot 
whence Mohammed ascended to heaven. 
The present building which covers it is a res- 
toration of the structure built in the sev- 
enth century, and was made by Solyman the 
Magnificent. 

When the crusaders captured Jerusalem 
in 1099 they erected upon Mount Moriah the 
buildings occupied by the Knights Templar. 

It is the irony of history that for 1,500 
years no Jew has been allowed to set foot 
upon this hill, on the summit of which it was 
in the time of Christ death for a Gentile to 
tread. The Jew may approach no nearer 



JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF PHARISEES. 243 



than the outer surface of the western wall. 
There, on payment of a sum of money, they 
have been permitted to come, and there they 
have come for centuries, and still come on 
stated days to kiss the hallowed stones, be- 
wail the sins which have lost them the favor 
of Jehovah, and pray for the restoration of 
their holy ground. 

II. But the western ridge of Jerusalem 
has for us a greater interest even than 
Mount Moriah. 

Its southern eminence was called, as we 
have seen, Mount Zion, or " The Sunny." 
This was the ancient J ebus of which we read : 
"The inhabitants of Jebus said to David, 
Thou shalt not come hither. Nevertheless 
David took the castle of Zion, which is the 
city of David. And David said, Whosoever 
smiteth the Jebusites first shall be chief and 
captain. So Joab the son of Zeruiah went 
first up, and was chief." Here the ark rested 
before the building of the temple. Here 
Christ stood before Pilate in the palace which 
Herod had built. From its gardens Roman 
soldiers plucked the twigs of white-thorn and 
the reed for the mock crown and sceptre. 
From that hour Zion passed out of history 
to be embalmed in hymns and prayers. 



244 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



The eminence north of Zion named Acra 
is believed to-day by very weighty authority 
to be Golgotha or Calvary, upon which the 
cross of Christ stood, near by the garden and 
the new tomb " wherein was never man yet 
laid." With the great authority of Dr. 
Robinson opposed to the identification, we 
venture to affirm only that 326 years after 
Christ the Empress Helena, the mother of 
Constantine, visited Jerusalem. Though she 
was eighty years old, her devotion burned 
with the enthusiasm of youth. She made 
diligent inquiry for the site of the crucifix- 
ion. She was shown this spot. It was at 
that time regarded as the true site of the 
Passion. 

To banish all doubts, three crosses and a 
clay placard inscribed as that upon which 
Pilate wrote " Jesus of Nazareth, king of the 
Jews," were exhumed before the eyes of the 
empress. 

When and by whom they were buried we 
scarcely need to ask. But whatever trickery 
may have been practiced tends to strengthen 
the force of the tradition, as the reputed site 
would naturally have been selected for the 
scene of its performance. 

Few facts in history are so well authenti- 



JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF PHARISEES. 245 



cated as that here Helena believed she had 
found the cross of Christ and the place of 
the crucifixion and the resurrection. After 
paying her devotions here, she erected the 
Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem, and 
that of the Ascension upon Olivet. Her son 
Constantine built the first Church of the 
Holy Sepulchre. The story is that he found 
over the actual grave a temple to Venus. 
When this had been removed the cave was 
brought to view in which the body of Jesus 
had lain. The emperor cut away the sur- 
rounding rock, leaving only the walls of the 
cave, encased them in white marble, and 
erected over them a noble building. The 
English Ordnance Survey, which is high au- 
thority, declares that the appearance of the 
locality closely corresponds with the tradi- 
tion. 1 

1 1 1 The sepulchre in which the body of our Lord was 
laid was originally a nearly square chamber of about six 
feet in length and breadth and about nine feet high. It 
lies nearly east and west ; and on the north side there is 
a low bench, on which the body was laid. The entrance 
to the chamber was by a very low passage leading into 
the south side from the east. The sepulchre was cut 
into the natural rock, but when the Emperor Constantine, 
at the instigation of his mother Helena, determined to do 
honor to this sacred spot, he is said to have caused the 
rock all round the sepulchre to be cut away to form a 



246 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



Beneath the temple of Constantine the 
cross remained, attracting innumerable pil- 
grims to worship it, until Jerusalem was 
taken by the Persians A. D. 614, the church 
destroyed, and the cross carried away. It 
was brought back by the Emperor Heraelius, 
who entered Jerusalem with an imposing 
procession of priests and warriors, bearing 
the cross upon his shoulders, and placed it 
again in a shrine rebuilt over the spot 
whence it had been taken. The crusaders 
found the site occupied by a small building 
with an open dome, and a chapel, one hun- 
dred and forty feet south of it, upon the re- 
puted place of the crucifixion. They inclosed 
both structures in the noble church of which 
the principal parts still remain. 

In 1099 the crusaders took Jerusalem by 

spacious inclosure round it, leaving the sepulchre itself 
standing in the midst, and an examination of the ground 
fully sustains this description." Ordnance Survey. The 
site of Calvary is thirteen feet higher. 

The difficulty which was urged by Dr. Robinson against 
this identification, and which appears insuperable, is that 
the locality almost demonstrably lies within the line of 
the ancient walls, and Christ was crucified ' ' without the 
gate." 

Professor Dawson thinks that a small elevation north 
of the city, which from certain directions bears some re- 
semblance to a skull, is the true site. 



JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF PHARISEES. 247 

storm. When they first caught sight of 
Zion, every soldier fell upon his knees and 
all voices joined in a hymn of praise. Be- 
fore beginning the assault the rival leaders, 
Tancred and Kaymond, who were at bitter 
feud, embraced each other in sight of all the 
army. The soldiers and other leaders fol- 
lowed their example. All swore to forget 
their discords and love one another for 
Christ's sake. Then they stormed the city. 
They entered it on Good Friday, at the hour 
when they believed their Master had prayed 
for his enemies, "Forgive them, Father." 
They began at once an indiscriminate mas- 
sacre, which continued three days. They 
murdered in cold blood 70,000 defenseless 
prisoners. They tortured the infidels, 
roasted them before slow fires, ripped open 
the bodies of living men to discover if they 
had swallowed gold. The worst passions of 
our nature rioted not only unrestrained, but 
stimulated by religious zeal. Lust and 
cruelty and avarice were baptized in the 
name of Christ. For outrages inflicted on 
the infidels seemed to the maddened crusa- 
ders vindications of the honor of their Lord. 

When wearied with slaughter, the whole 
Christian army marched in procession bare- 



248 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



footed, bare-headed, up the hill of Acra, to 
the supposed sepulchre of Christ, kissed its 
stones, wet it with their tears, and gave 
thanks in hymns and prayers. Was this 
pure Phariseeism ? It is but another proof 
of what history is perpetually teaching us, 
that no other sentiment has ever made men 
so devilish as religious zeal without the 
spirit of Christ. 

For eighty-eight years the Christians held 
possession of Jerusalem. Then it was re- 
taken by Saladin. His treatment of the cap- 
tives affords a lovely contrast to the horrors 
perpetrated by the Christians in their hour 
of victory. From the conquest of Saladin, 
the Holy City has been almost continuously 
under Mohammedan control. 

Probably no other battles fought on earth 
have shown so much bravery, such demoniac 
passion, and such relentless fury as those 
which have been fought for the possession of 
Jerusalem. For in most of its twenty-one 
recorded sieges the city has been defended 
and assaulted by men who believed them- 
selves the especial favorites of heaven obey- 
ing the direct commands of God» Jew, Mus- 
sulman, and Christian, each has expected 
with equal assurance the miraculous inter- 



JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF PHARISEES. 249 



vention of God in his behalf. This convic- 
tion has made its defenders fight with a 
valor no language can exaggerate, and often 
with a cruelty which it is scarcely possible 
to credit. But the millions of soldiers who 
have perished for the honor of Jerusalem 
have added no feather's weight to its influ- 
ence among mankind. It has ruled the 
world only because One who had long in- 
spired its psalmists and its prophets wept 
over it, walked through its streets saying, 
" They that take the sword shall perish by 
the sword," " Love one "another," gave his 
life in it for his enemies, died saying, " Fa- 
ther, forgive them," and rose again to shed 
his Spirit upon all flesh. 



XIV. 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF GOD. 
I. 

Driven from Jerusalem by the violence of 
their countrymen who had crucified Christ, 
the disciples went in all directions sowing 
the Saviour's teachings in soil prepared for 
its reception. To change the figure, the world 
was a vast prairie covered with dry grass. 
The crucifixion kindled a spark. The resur- 
rection made the spark a flame. The mur- 
der of Stephen was the stamping of fright- 
ened men who, in trying to put it out, scat- 
tered a thousand new sparks, each of which 
started a new fire where it fell. 

For more than a generation the Jews 
fought single - handed against Christianity. 
The Roman government sheltered the new 
faith from their fury and assured free course 
to its preachers. At the close of that period 
there was probably no considerable city in 
the empire where the gospel had not been 
heard, and few which did not contain be- 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF GOD. 251 

lievers. When the roots of the tree were set 
the storm came. 

On the eighteenth of July, A. d. 64, a fire 
broke out in Rome. It originated among 
shops occupied by Jews near the great cir- 
cus. It raged six days and seven nights, 
appeared to go out, burst forth again, and 
raged three days longer. The great fire at 
Chicago consumed less than a third of that 
city. The great fire at Rome consumed five 
sevenths of the place, and left the metropolis 
of the world in ruins. 

Nero, the emperor, was at Antium, his sea- 
side villa, when the fire began. On the even- 
ing of the third day he returned to Rome. 
He mounted the roof of Maecenas' palace to 
view the conflagration. Excited to frenzy 
by the splendor of the spectacle, he called 
for his lyre, and in scenic dress chanted be- 
fore applauding sycophants a description of 
the burning of Troy. 

It was not unreasonably inferred that one 
so callous to the immeasurable calamity 
might be its author. The rumor gained 
credence that Nero had fired the city to clear 
the ground for a palace he wished to build. 
It was necessary to divert the popular fury 
to some other victim. Who should be made 



252 ANCIENT CITIES. 



the scapegoat ? "Why not accuse the Chris- 
tians of the crime ? The charge would ap- 
pear plausible. The fire had begun in the 
shops of Jews. The Christians were known 
as a Jewish sect at feud with the rest of 
their countrymen. The fire had destroyed 
the great circus, and the great circus was 
the conspicuous representative of those popu- 
lar amusements which the Christians were 
known to abhor. The fire had destroyed 
every temple and nearly every idol in Rome. 
The Christians were known as enemies of 
the temples, and such was their hostility to 
idols that it was believed they would not 
touch a Eoman coin because it bore the 
image of Caesar, nor pass through a gateway 
surmounted by a pagan image. What was 
even more significant, the Christians had 
constantly asserted that Eome, and indeed 
the world, would for its sins be consumed by 
fire, and doubtless some had been heard dur- 
ing the progress of the conflagration declar- 
ing — as fanatics declared at the great fires 
in London and in Chicago — that the end 
of the world had come in accordance with 
their predictions. More than all, the Chris- 
tians were friendless. If the calm and judi- 
cial Tacitus could consider them " a sort of 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF GOD. 253 

people who held a new and impure supersti- 
tion," and call their faith " a deadly fanati- 
cism ; " if Suetonius could describe them 
as " a people always making disturbances at 
the instigation of one Chrestus ; " if the 
amiable Pliny could label Christianity "a 
depraved, wicked, and fatal superstition," it 
requires little imagination to conceive how 
the base and ignorant rabble regarded the 
followers of Christ. 

Nero felt safe in declaring that the Chris- 
tians had fired Rome. To emphasize the 
accusation he condemned them all to death. 
The gates of the city were watched to pre- 
vent their escape. To gratify his own de- 
light in cruelty and at the same time please 
the populace, the emperor arranged the exe- 
cutions in the form of a public entertain- 
ment. 

The horror of this spectacle was unprece- 
dented. " There followed," says Uhlhorn, 
"a carnival of bloodshed such as Rome, 
thoroughly accustomed as it then was to 
murder, had never yet seen. It was not 
enough simply to put the supposed crimi- 
nals to death, for of course the more cruelly 
they were treated, the more guilty they 
would be made to appear. And so the most 



254 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



horrible torments were employed, and new 
modes of execution were invented to torture 
them. Those who were crucified and thus 
imitated their Lord in their death could 
consider themselves favored. Others were 
sewn up in the skins of wild beasts and torn 
to pieces by dogs. Still others were used in 
tragic spectacles in the manner before men- 
tioned." (The allusion is to executions in 
which the condemned were compelled to en- 
act classic tragedies of Greece with absolute 
reality ; in which " Hercules ascended on his 
funeral pyre and was burned alive, with 
complete theatrical machinery for the delight 
of a sight loving people.") In this Neronic 
persecution, continues Uhlhorn, " Christian 
women personating the Danaids and Dirce 
were brought upon the stage, and there cer- 
tainly happened to the one who represented 
Dirce, what, according to the legend befell 
her, namely, that she was bound to a raging 
bull, and dragged to death." 

At night-fall the imperial gardens were 
opened to the public. They were brilliantly 
illuminated. Huge torches lined the avenues, 
reddening the ponds and making the foun- 
tains jets of crimson. Each torch was a 
Christian wound in tow saturated with pitch 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF GOD. 255 

and touched with fire. By this light Nero 
attired as a charioteer, drove his golden 
chariot along the winding ways. 

But Nero overreached himself. He in- 
tended to increase the popular detestation 
of the Christians. He greatly diminished 
it. The atrocities inflicted upon them so 
greatly exceeded any cruelties ever seen in 
Rome before that even the Romans felt a 
reaction of pity. They began in some slight 
degree to sympathize with the despised sect. 
Its numbers increased. The fact is signifi- 
cant. The sight of torture in the arena en- 
dured as pagans endured it had made the 
Romans brutes. The sight of torture in the 
same arena endured as Christians endured 
it was among the most effective means by 
which those brutes were reformed into men. 
The centurion had probably witnessed many 
a crucifixion, and been hardened by every 
one he had seen, when the crucifixion of 
Christ moved him to exclaim, " This man was 
the Son of God." It is said that the fre- 
quent sight of suffering blunts the sympa- 
thies. The truth of the saying is proved by 
the experiences of some nurses and of some 
physicians. But the sight of suffering en- 
dured as Christ endured it tends to make 



256 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



men tender. And that fact, confirmed in 
many a hospital, is proved by the conversion 
of the Roman Empire. This is the truth 
which underlies the familiar proverb, " The 
blood of the martyrs is the seed of the 
church." 

The persecution by Nero was not confined 
to Rome. Asia Minor felt its fury. But it 
was not general throughout the empire. It 
was a sudden outburst of passionate malig- 
nity caused by the crime and cowardice of 
a single man. 

Before it had ceased Nero erected upon 
land cleared by the great fire a palace which 
has probably never been equaled in costli- 
ness and size. The grounds were magnifi- 
cently adorned. " Expansive lakes," says 
Tacitus, " and fields of vast extent were in- 
termixed with pleasing variety. Woods and 
forests stretched to an immeasurable length, 
presenting gloom and solitude amid scenes 
of open space, w r here the eye wandered with 
delight over an unbounded prospect." One 
of these lakes, Suetonius declares, was " like 
a sea." It occupied the site on which the 
Colosseum stands, and was the favorite place 
for gladiatorial sea-fights. The palace was 
included in triple porticoes a mile in length. 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF GOD. 257 



The baths were supplied with fresh water by 
a special aqueduct from Alba, with sea water 
by a second aqueduct from Ostia, and the 
hot mineral springs of Tivoli, eighteen miles 
away, were made to empty into them. 

Some of the banqueting rooms were paneled 
and ceiled with mother-of-pearl, others with 
ivory, and others still were inclosed in walls 
of translucent alabaster. The walls and ceil- 
ing of one apartment were faced throughout 
with plates of solid gold thickly studded with 
pearls and precious stones. From concealed 
openings flowers were strewn and precious 
unguents dropped like dew upon the ban- 
queters. The principal feasting hall was un- 
derneath a spacious dome, which revolved, 
by means of noiseless machinery, day and 
night, like the sky. A passage in Varro's 
" Res Rustica " makes it probable that the 
time of day was continuously shown by the 
changing positions of stars set in the revolv- 
ing hemisphere, and it is certain that there 
was some connection between the succession 
of courses at the banquet and the movement 
of the ceiling. 

A statue of Nero in gilded bronze, one 
hundred and twenty feet high, stood in the 
portico before the palace, and a portrait of 



258 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



the same criminal in still larger size was 
painted upon the wall behind the statue. 

Within this " Golden House " the loath- 
some creature who had built it spent the 
days in nameless orgies. Among the least 
execrable of his crimes against nature were 
the assassination of his mother, and the bru- 
tal murder of his wife. At night he sallied 
forth to outrage and pillage his subjects in 
the streets of the city, followed by a band 
of gladiators to protect him from any who 
resisted his infamous assaults. 

I. While this delirium of cruelty, extrava- 
gance and shame raged at Rome, the awful 
occurrences which preceded the destruction 
of J erusalem began to multiply in the East. 

The Jews had already drawn upon them- 
selves an almost universal detestation. The 
heathen felt toward them as some of the 
United States feel in our time toward the 
Chinese. For the Jews went everywhere, 
but became nowhere citizens. They grew 
rich, were exempt from military service, 
contributed an infinitesimal amount to the 
taxes under which the rest of the empire 
groaned, took no interest in the state or its 
affairs, and regarded all Gentiles with aver- 
sion and contempt. They had earned for 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF GOD. 259 

themselves the title inherited from them by 
the Christians, " Enemies of the human 
race." 

A fresh rebellion broke out in Jerusalem. 
The Romans, advancing to suppress it, 
sacked Csesarea with great slaughter. The 
Gentiles of Alexandria assembled to send to 
Nero an assurance of their loyalty. Before 
the ensuing tumults ended, they had empha- 
sized those assurances by the massacre of 
fifty thousand Jewish citizens. At Damas- 
cus they proved their devotion to Rome by 
murdering ten thousand more. Wherever 
the reports of these outrages spread, the 
Gentiles rejoiced to hear of them, and the 
Gentiles had not yet learned to distinguish 
between Christians and Jews. Meantime, 
Nero, the monstrous head of this anarchy of 
horror, was traversing Greece, singing like 
a circus clown in competition for prizes at 
the public games. 

The war which terminated in the siege of 
J erusalem, by Titus, virtually began with the 
massacre at Csesarea. The horrors of that 
siege are unparalleled in history. More 
than a million Jews w r ere slaughtered or 
starved, and of the temple not one stone was 
left upon another. No Christian perished 



260 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



in the siege, for all Christians had left the 
city before it began. But the destruction 
of the Holy City was scarcely less a shock 
to Christians than to J ews. Nero, it is true, 
was dead when the temple fell, but the be- 
lief prevailed throughout the East that he 
was still alive, concealed in Parthia, and 
would soon return to repeat with exagger- 
ated fury his blasphemies and persecutions. 
James, Peter, and Paul had all been killed. 
Of the great apostles, those counted pillars 
in the church, John alone survived. 

At this crisis of horror and consternation 
— a crisis never paralleled in the history of 
the church — when the end of all things 
seemed near, and the eyes of Christians 
could discern only reasons for dismay ; when 
other disciples saw their hopes buried be- 
neath the falling walls of the old Jerusalem, 
and heard only the shrieks of the tortured, 
and the groans of the dying, the disciple 
whom Jesus loved discerned amid the uni- 
versal ruin, " The Holy City, New J erusa- 
leni, coming down from God, out of heaven, 
adorned as a bride for her husband ; " heard 
above the shrieks of pain and the wail of 
despair " a new song, and harpers harping 
with their harps." In the sea of carnage 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF GOD. 261 



he saw a great white throne, unshaken, im- 
movable, rising high above the puny rage 
of Nero, and in the midst of the throne a 
lamb, as it had been slain. Looking up- 
ward from the torches in Nero's gardens, 
and the forest of crosses there, from the 
bodies of mangled saints, and destroying- 
beasts, he saw radiant creatures standing- 
near the throne, whom He that sat thereon 
was not ashamed to call his brethren, and 
heard a voice which said, " These are they 
which come out of the great tribulation." 

This is the genesis of that noblest and 
most inspiring of Christian poems, the Apoc- 
alypse. It has been in times of affliction 
the stay of the church. If men use it as 
the triumphal hymn of the ages, as St. Ber- 
nard used it ; as the slaves on Southern rice 
fields used it, when the crack of the over- 
seer's whip was drowned in the songs of the 
New J erusalem ; as we have often used it 
when, amid the wrecks of shattered house- 
holds, we point from the ruined corse to the 
throne that cannot be ruined ; if we use it 
thus, as the inspired assurance that every 
wrong shall die, and every right shall tri- 
umph, that love is immortal, that every tear 
shall be wiped away, and that they who 



262 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



trust the Saviour cannot die ; then the Apoc- 
alypse, the Rent Vail, will prove to us also 
the whisper of God, the breath of Paradise, 
bringing spring upon the winter of this 
world. If we turn to the book, expecting to 
find in it some key that will unlock the fu- 
ture, and betray to a faithless curiosity the 
secrets of God, it will drive us, if we are 
earnest men, as it has driven many such be- 
fore us, towards insanity or atheism. 

Given, as we have seen, through the in- 
spirations of the first persecution, the Apoc- 
alypse remained the support of the church 
in sharper and more ghastly persecutions 
which were to come. 

II. At the close of the first century the 
Christians were still considered Jews. The 
world regarded them as a Jewish sect like 
the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, 
the Herodians, or the Zealots. Early in the 
second century they began to be recognized 
as a distinct and separate people. The Ro- 
man government discerned instinctively in 
the church an irreconcilable antagonist. An 
antagonist respectful, obedient to law, never 
resisting violence, nor returning evil for 
evil, soft as velvet, but firm as steel. The 
church affected the pagan world as a pure 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF GOD. 263 



wife clothed in the invincible strength of 
gentleness affects a vicious and brutal hus- 
band. The husband must mend his ways 
or be rid of his wife. Mankind must obey 
Christ or crucify Him. The Eoman govern- 
ment recognized the fact it could not ex- 
plain. It or Christianity must perish. The 
duel began by the attempt to compel Chris- 
tians to worship Caesar, and reached its cli- 
max in the reign of Decius and Valerian. 

At the beginning of the second century, 
Trajan had pronounced Christianity unlaw- 
ful. But he had taken pains to prevent the 
enforcement of his own decree. The later 
persecutions were intended to exterminate 
Christianity. The whole power of the gov- 
ernment with its multitudinous ramifications 
reaching from the Euphrates to the Tagus 
was exerted to achieve that end. 

One of the most authentic and thrilling 
narratives of the martyrdoms is that of Pol- 
ycarp at Smyrna. He was born before the 
destruction of Jerusalem, had been a disci- 
ple of John, and had doubtless often heard 
from the lips of the disciple whom Jesus 
loved the truths we read in his Gospel, and 
the hopes we gather from his vision. There- 
fore it is not strange that when the crowd 



264 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



clamored for the blood of Polycarp the pro- 
consul was fascinated by his spirit, or that 
when the proconsul exclaimed, " Speak one 
word against Christ, and I can save you ! " 
the old man answered, "Eighty and six 
years have I served Him, and He never did 
me wrong. How can I blaspheme my king 
who has saved me ? " 

They had brought him to the place of ex- 
ecution mounted upon an ass, I suppose to 
ridicule his Master. Once more the procon- 
sul tried to save him : "If you will not re- 
vile Christ, swear by the Genius of the em- 
peror ! " " I am a Christian." " Then 
speak to the people, move them as you have 
moved me." " I owed you an answer, for 
we are told to honor the powers that be, but 
I owe them nothing but to love them." The 
wild beasts were shown him, the stake, the 
fagots. " Only do not bind me. He who 
strengthens me to endure the fire will not 
let me flinch." 

As the flames curled round him and 
crisped the martyr's flesh, they heard the 
old man saying, " Lord God almighty, 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, I praise 
Thee that Thou hast judged me worthy of this 
day and of this hour, to share in the num- 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF GOD. 265 

ber of thy witnesses, and in the cup of thy 
Christ." 

Though persecution was inexorably pressed, 
neither Christian nor pagan has recorded a 
single malediction uttered by its victims. 
The flames which burned them bore upward 
blessings upon their enemies and prayers for 
those who despitefully used and persecuted 
them. Men came to mock their agonies, 
and departed worshiping their Saviour. 
This legalized persecution also failed, and 
failed utterly. The number of Christians 
was larger at its close than at its begin- 
ning. 

III. The last persecution was inspired 
mainly by religious motives. It was there- 
fore the fiercest of all. 

The Christians seemed to the heathens 
atheists, because they worshiped nothing vis- 
ible, and not to worship an image appeared 
to the Roman world not to worship at all. 

Diocletian was emperor. He was at once 
a statesman and a sincerely religious pa- 
gan. The son of a slave, he had risen to su- 
preme power by his own abilities. While 
he was still in the ranks near Paris, a Druid 
priestess had told him he would become em- 
peror when he had slain the boar. In vain 



266 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



he hunted the forests of Ardennes and 
slaughtered the wild swine there. But 
when he killed Aper, who was accused of 
assassinating Numerianus, the soldiers chose 
him emperor by acclamation, and it was re- 
membered that aper means a boar. 

Diocletian was long restrained from per- 
secuting the Christians by his own sagacity. 
Near the close of his reign, when his powers 
had begun to fail, he was persuaded by his 
colleague, the fierce and stupid Gralerius, to 
take the foolish step. The Christians in the 
eartern part of the empire are supposed to 
have numbered at that time about one in 
twelve of the population ; in the western, 
about one in fifteen. But though so small a 
minority, they exceeded in number any one 
of the many pagan sects. They were massed 
in cities, while the pagans, as their name im- 
plies, were scattered through the country dis- 
tricts. In Antioch a single church contained 
fifty thousand members. Some of the high- 
est offices in the empire were filled by Chris- 
tians, and the empress herself was suspected 
of being one of them. More than all, the 
Christians were animated by a zeal which 
the heathen world could not match. These 
facts made persecution perilous. Despite 



NEW JERUSALEM, TEE CITY OF GOD. 267 



the danger, the decree was issued. It was 
framed with great sagacity. Former attacks 
had been aimed at Christian men. This was 
aimed at Christian literature. It was sought 
to starve Christianity by destroying its food. 
Christians were not at first required to revile 
Christ or to worship Caesar. They were only 
commanded to surrender their sacred books. 
All who possessed copies of any Christian 
writings were enjoined, on pain of death, to 
present them to be burned ; all who knew 
where such writings were concealed were re- 
quired to inform or suffer the same penalty. 
Imperial spies, stimulated by hope of large 
rewards, searched the empire. Inhuman 
tortures were applied to compel confession. 
Christians who surrendered their books were 
called traditores, or " givers up," and thus 
was coined that word of odious meaning, 
shortened at last into " traitor," which sig- 
nifies a Christian who surrendered his books. 

The persecution prompted by pagan pas- 
sion failed, as we have seen, by exciting pity 
in the persecutors. The persecution inaugu- 
rated by pagan policy failed even more con- 
spicuously and absolutely, and convinced 
Roman statesmen that Christian character 
and influence were essential to the welfare 



268 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



of the state. The persecution instituted by 
pagan piety under Diocletian ended in a still 
more striking reversal of the purpose it 
was intended to achieve. The 23d of Feb- 
ruary, 303, that persecution began. It was 
brought about and enforced by Galerius, and 
permitted by Diocletian in order to vindicate 
the honor of the pagan gods. It continued 
until 311. That year Galerius lay dying of 
a loathsome malady. Every pagan deity had 
been besought with fervent devotion for his 
restoration to health. Costly rites had been 
performed. Still the emperor grew worse. 
Then came a proclamation from his sick- 
chamber, dictated by himself. It granted 
liberty of worship to all Christians in the 
empire, and entreated them to pray for the 
emperor. In less than ten years the cross 
was emblazoned upon the arms of Constan- 
tine, and within fourteen Christianity had 
become the religion of the state. 

The fact of surpassing interest about this 
last and most terrible of all the persecutions 
endured by the church is this. It gave us 
the New Testament. Planned to destroy the 
oracles of our faith, it only purified them. 
Those writings which Christians did not su- 
premely value were surrendered, and burned. 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE CITY OF GOB. 269 

Those which Christians counted more pre- 
cious than life they preserved. Yielding the 
chaff, they kept the wheat. The canon of 
the New Testament was not formed by the 
decree of any man or body of men. It is 
simply those writings out of an enormous 
mass of early Christian literature which 
seemed to Christians so unspeakably precious 
that they risked their lives to save them. 

The history of these persecutions is mourn- 
ful but glorious. It records the triumph of 
Christ over the world, the flesh, and the devil, 
and reveals the foundations of the New Jeru- 
salem laid in cement of blood. 



XV. 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE KING. 
IL 

More than eighteen hundred years ago 
there was in Palestine a workingraan, a car- 
penter. He belonged to a humble family 
and lived in a small village which bore an 
evil reputation among its neighbors, Early 
in his life his mother became a widow, and 
until past his thirtieth year he worked at the 
bench, earning wages to support her. Then, 
when younger brothers could take his place 
at home, he laid down the plane and saw 
and began to preach. He said that his 
preaching was the Gospel of Almighty God, 
At times his kinsmen said he was beside 
himself, and once his mother seems to have 
thought him mad. In less than three years 
he had provoked so much hostility from the 
religious, which were the ruling classes of his 
countrymen, that they determined to kill him. 
They arrested him by treachery, tried him by 
perjury, and condemned him to death ille- 



NEW JERUSALEM, TEE KING. 271 



gaily upon the charge of blasphemy. That 
charge could not stand in a Roman court, as 
the Romans did not consider blasphemy, un- 
less it was aimed at Caesar, a capital offense. 
The Jews were subject to the laws of Rome. 
It was therefore necessary to convict the 
prisoner upon some other indictment. He 
was accused of sedition and arraigned before 
Pontius Pilate, a Roman official of Tiberius 
Caesar. Acquitted by Pilate of every charge 
brought against him, he was nevertheless by 
Pilate's permission executed, in defiance of 
law, to please the Jews. During his trial 
and execution, which were exceptionally pain- 
ful, the prisoner manifested rare fortitude, 
and, although he offered no resistance, quietly 
asserted that he was a king and would some- 
time be recognized and revered as such. He 
had been followed to Pilate's judgment hall 
by a furious mob clamoring for his death. 
He calmly insisted that he w r as their king. 

The Roman soldiers, to whom the prisoner 
was a stranger, and who cannot therefore be 
supposed to have been prejudiced against 
him, treated his assertion with boisterous 
ridicule. They also appear to have consid- 
ered him insane. They flung over him a 
robe of some coarse material, and of a color 



272 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



which grotesquely suggested the imperial 
scarlet. They plucked twigs from the hedges 
of white-thorn in Pilate's gardens, twisted 
them into a crown, and placed it on his head. 
They broke off a reed and thrust it as a 
sceptre between his palms, which were bound 
together, and knelt before him in coarse and 
brutal but jovial mockery. Soldiers in gar- 
rison with little to occupy their minds will 
often act like frolicsome children. So I 
have seen school-boys gather around a woman 
whose disordered brain mistook her rags for 
royal apparel, her tattered hood for a crown, 
and provoke her to yet crazier conduct by 
simulating reverence. It is almost an instinct 
of human nature to deride assumptions which 
appear exorbitant. The same impulse which 
moved slave - holders to call their negroes 
Scipio, Cato, and Caesar, influenced the Eo- 
man soldiers to mock their prisoner. Even 
to those who knew and loved him, his claims 
appeared baseless, for they all forsook him 
and fled, though he had promised those who 
followed him to the end thrones beside his 
own. 

When they had mocked and scourged him 
the soldiers led their victim to a place called 
Golgotha. There they nailed him to a wooden 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE KING. 273 

cross. Over it was written in three lan- 
guages, that all might appreciate the irony, 
" Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews." For 
the prisoner's name was Jesus, he had lived 
at Nazareth, and he claimed to be king of 
the Jews. 

After hanging upon the cross six hours he 
was supposed to be dead. It is even said 
that one of the soldiers thrust a spear into 
his heart and so proved that he was dead. 
But I will not insist upon that statement, be- 
cause it has been doubted, and I would avoid 
any assertion which the most skeptical will 
question. I will therefore only say that 
many have believed, and many still believe, 
that the spear pierced the heart of Jesus. 
That statement no one will deny. 

During the whole of this experience the 
man who was crucified made no resistance, 
but calmly persisted that he was a king, that 
some of those standing by would discern his 
kingdom before they died, and that eventu- 
ally every knee should bow before him and 
every tongue confess that he was Lord. 

All this occurred in a remote and petty 
province of the Roman Empire. It attracted 
no attention at the time beyond the limits of 
that province. Of all the classic historians 



274 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



only one refers to it, and he, Tacitus, who 
belonged to the next generation, dismisses 
the occurrence in three lines of his volumi- 
nous history with an implied apology for 
mentioning an incident so trivial among af- 
fairs of serious importance. 

So the carpenter died. He had preached 
less than three years. His family, at times 
at least, thought him insane. The influen- 
tial classes of his countrymen branded him 
an imposter. The Roman soldiers laughed 
at his pretensions. He left not a line of 
writing. There was no press to diffuse a 
knowledge of his words or deeds. He had 
no recognized disciples save a few unlettered 
men with neither wealth nor influence. 
When in the presence of death he declared 
himself a king, J erusalem gnashed her teeth 
and Rome grinned. 

I. Three hundred years have passed. 
The capital of the world is moving from 
Rome to Constantinople. We are at Nice, 
in Asia Minor. The city quivers with ex- 
citement. Strangers are hourly arriving. 
They come from far and near. The great 
military roads, the arteries of the empire, 
with their relays of horses conveying govern- 
ment officials a hundred miles a day, have 



NEW JERUSALEM, TEE KING. 275 



been put at the service of these strangers. 
Each has been brought from his home, and 
will be returned to it, at government ex- 
pense, and while absent is an honored guest 
of royalty. They have come from all parts 
of the civilized world. Three hundred and 
eighteen of them, who appear distinguished 
above the others, are assembled in the great 
hall of the imperial palace. They have been 
chosen as the ablest and most influential men 
of three continents, and are called overseers 
of other men, or, in Greek, bishops. The 
floor of the hall is oblong, and the bishops 
are seated around it as spectators in an am- 
phitheatre. At the centre stands a low altar. 
On it lies a roll of closely written parch- 
ment. It is believed to contain reports of 
the words spoken and the deeds done three 
hundred years ago by the man who was cru- 
cified at Golgotha. 

At a signal the august assembly rises. 
Every eye is strained toward the extremity 
of the apartment opposite the scroll. The 
wide doors open. A stately figure enters the 
hall alone. He is almost a giant in stature 
and in strength. But his form is symmet- 
rical and very beautiful. His face is ruddy 
like the face of a Saxon. His eyes are deep 



276 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



blue, and his long fair hair falls in thick 
masses about his shoulders. He is counted 
the kingliest looking man of his time. Upon 
his forehead rests the imperial diadem of 
pearls. His helmet has been laid aside, or 
the cross would appear above the eagle. His 
mantle of imperial scarlet blazes with jew- 
els. This man is Constantine, the successor 
of Pilate's master. Reverently and unat- 
tended, he advances towards the scroll and 
bends before it. A throne of carved wood 
adorned with gold has been placed for him. 
He will not be seated until one of the three 
hundred, representing the rest, commands 
him to take his throne in the name of the 
man who was crucified at Golgotha. 

There are hundreds of officials, each the 
peer of Pilate. A word of Constantine will 
send them all to death without appeal, and 
Constantine addresses the representatives of 
the Nazarene whom Pilate's soldiers mocked 
as "My fathers," and tells them he has 
brought them together that they may teach 
him how to worship most acceptably the 
man who was crucified at Golgotha. Three 
hundred years ago the rabble at Jerusa- 
lem were shouting, " Away with him ! We 
will have no king but Caesar ! " Now Cae- 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE KING, 'All 

sar answers back, "I have no king but 
Christ." 

II. Sixty -five years more have passed. 
The emperor Theodosius has come to Milan 
to offer thanks and prayers to the Giver of 
victories in the city of the venerated Am- 
brose. Attended by military guards and 
courtiers, he approaches the church. His 
foot is lifted to ascend its steps. A priest 
holding a crucifix before him stands in the 
porch, and forbids the monarch's further 
advance. It is Ambrose. In the name of 
Christ he reminds his sovereign of the mas- 
sacre at Thessalonica, and declares that no 
unrepentant murderer shall enter the holy 
place, though that murderer be Caesar. The 
emperor humbly remonstrates : " David com- 
mitted homicide, and David was forgiven." 
" As you have imitated David in his crimes, 
imitate David in his repentance." And the 
master of the Roman Empire suffers him- 
self to be stripped of the insignia of royalty, 
to be clothed in sackcloth, and after eight 
months of penance he will be thankful for 
permission to enter the church, where, pros- 
trate upon the marble pavement, he will en- 
treat with sighs and tears forgiveness from 
the man who was crucified at Golgotha, 



278 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



III. Other centuries have passed. The 
Empire has perished. Csesar is a tradition, 
Rome a ruin. A new power has arisen in 
the West. The kingdom of the Franks, has 
come. Charlemagne is now the foremost 
man in the world. He has conquered most 
of Europe. He has subdued Italy, and now 
is worshiping at Rome because, the fathers 
tell him, it is the day on which angels sang 
over the birth of his king at Bethlehem ; the 
last Christmas day of the eighth century. 
While he kneels in the Cathedral of St. 
Peter ignorant, he will afterwards declare, 
of what is coming to himself, and absorbed 
in the solemnities of devotion, the Pope ap- 
proaches him from behind and crowns him 
emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, in the 
name of the man who was crucified at Gol- 
gotha. 

Twenty-six years before, the monarch had 
assumed at Monza the Lombard crown, 
which made him virtually sovereign of Italy. 
It is, perhaps, impossible to say with cer- 
tainty whether the existing Lombard crown 
is identical with that which was used by 
Charlemagne, or a reproduction made in the 
thirteenth century. Neither is it important 
to our purpose to decide. It is sufficient to 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE KING. 279 

know that it has generally been believed to 
be the same, and that those who have worn 
it, Charles V. and Napoleon among them, 
have assumed it to be the iron crown which 
was used in the coronation of Lombard 
kings from the days of Queen Theodelinda 
and which rested upon the brow of Charle- 
magne. 

It is the most celebrated diadem in the 
world, and has been more revered than all 
others combined. It is a circle of broad gold 
plates so joined as to form a ribbon - like 
band, adorned with blue enamel, embossed 
with flowers, and set with a few large sap- 
phires, rubies, and emeralds. Neither the 
gold, nor the gems, nor the workmanship 
have given it the unique reverence which it 
still retains. Within the golden circle runs 
a thin rim of iron. Millions have believed 
that it was made from one of the nails that 
pierced the feet of the man who was crucified 
at Golgotha. Without contending for the 
truth of the tradition, it is certain that, 
partly because of it, in the course of twelve 
hundred years some of the most powerful 
monarchs in the world have sought to in- 
crease their glory by placing this crown upon 
their heads ; and that Napoleon, when near 



280 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



the pinnacle of his greatness, established the 
order which, afterwards adopted by Fran- 
cis of Austria, took rank among the most 
honorable in Europe, the Order of the Iron 
Crown. 

No single incident in history, it seems 
to me, illustrates more suggestively the con- 
trast between real and apparent power, 
than that which occurred in the great Ca- 
thedral of Milan on the 26th of May, 1805, 
when Napoleon, the ablest monarch who has 
lived for eighteen centuries, surrounded by 
an apparently invincible army of soldiers 
who adored him, and watched by a world 
that feared him ; grasping the strongest 
sword ever intrusted to a human hand, took 
the iron crown with the words : " God has 
given it to me; let him touch it who dares! " 
and crowned himself with one of the nails 
which had pierced the Galilean's foot. In 
a few years the man who closed his hand to 
clutch the sword plunged from Tilsit to St. 
Helena. The man who opened his hand to 
receive the nails still continues his trium- 
phant march above the slopes of Calvary up 
the everlasting hills. 

IV. Other centuries have passed. Charle- 
magne is buried in romance. Europe has 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE KING. 281 



been roused from a long torpor. An enthu- 
siasm never paralleled at any other period 
of her history has swept her people. It has 
thrilled from London to Vienna, from Paris 
to Prague. It has fired the monarch on his 
throne and the peasant in his hovel. Before 
it ends kings, courtiers, artisans, women, 
and little children will be rushing towards 
the Orient. Monarchs have mortgaged 
their whole revenues, nobles have sold all 
their possessions to purchase equipments of 
war. The interest felt to-day in questions 
of capital and labor is a calm stream com- 
pared to the passion which agitated Europe 
in the eleventh century. What was the 
object to win which those men counted 
power, wealth, and life itself cheaply given ? 
They were minded to rescue from sacrile- 
gious hands the spot of earth where they 
believed that once for three days had lain 
the dead body of the man who was crucified 
at Golgotha. 

The crusaders have penetrated Asia. They 
have captured Antioch. But the Saracens 
have come in countless numbers. The Chris- 
tian army has been beaten back within the 
defenses of the city and - is besieged w T ithin 
its walls. Famine and disease have begun 



282 ANCIENT CITIES. 



their work. The champions of the cross 
are dispirited. They sue for mercy. It is 
haughtily refused. Their leaders strive in 
vain to make them sally. Repulsed so of- 
ten, they cannot be persuaded to renew the 
battle. Cowed, despairing, they await within 
the walls the death which seems inevitable 
and near. 

So was it at sunset. The next sunrise 
found the streets of Antioch ringing with 
triumphant battle- hymns sung by soldiers 
eager to be led against the enemy. The 
ardor of the Christian army was with diffi- 
culty restrained until the festival of St. 
Paul and St. Peter. On that day the city 
gates were flung fearlessly open. The walls 
were thronged by women and children 
quivering with the excitement of anticipated 
victory. A company of monks marched 
forth, chanting, " Let the Lord God arise, 
let his enemies be scattered." They were 
led by Raymond d'Agiles. He bore in his 
hands as a standard a spear shaft sur- 
mounted by a rusted barb. In twelve battal- 
ions, each named after one of the apostles, 
the crusading army followed. They ad- 
vanced toward the besieging army. The 
Saracens could not believe their eyes. But 



NEW JERUSALEM, TEE KING. 283 



they could not withstand the charge. Led 
by the iron standard, the Christians were 
irresistible. At night-fall the Saracens had 
vanished, all of thern but 100,000 corpses 
said to have been left upon the field. 

What made these cowed men brave? 
Not the refreshment of sleep, for they had 
spent the night in a vigil of prayer ! Not 
the strength of food, for famine stalked the 
streets of Antioch ! They believed that in 
answer to their supplications their leaders 
had found beneath the pavement of the 
Cathedral, and that Eaymond bore before 
their eyes, the spear which had pierced the 
heart of the man who was crucified at Gol- 
gotha. In the flakes of rust upon it they 
recognized stains of the " blood shed for 
many," and that conviction made them irre- 
sistible. 

V. Still the years pass. We are at Paris. 
It is the 18th of July, 1239 a. d. Eight 
days ago the king with the royal family, the 
court, and the highest dignitaries of the 
church, rode forth upon the road to Troyes. 
They, rode silently as men filled with solemn 
recollections. At Villeneuve, five miles from 
Sens, they met another procession reverently 
guarding what appeared to be a chest of 



284 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



treasure. At sight of it the royal cavalcade 
dismounted. The monarch, with the royal 
family and the archbishop, was permitted to 
approach and view the treasure. It had 
been brought from Constantinople. When 
rumors of its removal were whispered in 
the East, the king of Greece instantly dis- 
patched the swiftest ships in his navy to 
intercept and take possession of the prize. 
The captain commanding the vessel that 
bore it refused a military escort, convinced 
that Heaven w r ould protect a freight so holy, 
and the counselors at Constantinople agreed 
in his opinion. It reached Venice safely, and 
there was guarded at the Cathedral of St. 
Mark as the most valuable object in the 
city. The emperor of Germany gave safe 
and honorable conduct to those transporting 
it to France. Thus Constantinople, Greece, 
Italy, Germany, and France, each in a dif- 
ferent way, expressed their appreciation of 
its value, and those who carried it added 
their testimony that Heaven watched over 
its safety, since no rain fell during their 
journey except at night when the treasure 
was protected, and rain was needed to lay the 
dust which might otherwise defile it on the 
morrow. 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE KING. 285 

The royal family knelt around the wooden 
coffer. They gazed long upon its contents, 
rained their tears upon it, and gave thanks 
to God. The next day the king returned to 
Paris to prepare for its reception there. 
Eight days were consumed in the prepara- 
tions. The great day arrived. The shops 
were closed. The streets were thronged. 
From the Faubourg St. Antoine to the 
Cathedral of Notre Dame they were carpeted, 
and the buildings adjacent hung with costly 
tapestries. The entire court, with the queen 
and the royal ladies, followed by a vast pro- 
cession, moved toward the Cathedral. In 
the van was every ecclesiastic of Paris. All 
marched on foot. Between the churchmen 
and the court walked the king and his old- 
est brother, the duke of Artois. Both were 
barefooted, and clad only in coarse woolen 
shirts. Upon their shoulders they bore the 
precious treasure. The people, we may be- 
lieve, knelt and crossed themselves as it 
pssed by, and only the tolling of bells was 
heard in the silent city. 

Before the procession entered Paris the 
treasure it escorted had been displayed to 
the people. A throne was placed upon a 
platform in the suburb of St. Antoine. 



286 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



Around it, upon the platform, knelt the most 
illustrious men of France. Beyond the plat- 
form a countless multitude waited upon the 
ground. All eyes were fixed upon him as 
the archbishop lifted the wooden lid and took 
from beneath it a silver casket marked with 
the seals of Constantinople and Venice. 
From the silver casket the same hands took 
a smaller one of gold. From this the arch- 
bishop lifted, and, before placing it upon the 
throne, held aloft in view of the awe-struck 
worshipers a chaplet of withered thorns ! 
They were believed to be those which, 
plucked by mocking soldiers from the hedges 
of Pilate's gardens, had pierced the brow of 
the man who was crucified at Golgotha. 

Therefore France paid for them a sum 
which saved the Eastern Empire from bank- 
ruptcy, and therefore when they were laid in 
the most holy chapel of Paris which the king 
built to receive them and other memorials of 
the Galilean, the city felt secured from all 
evil by the blessing of God. 

You have stood at Rome in the great 
cathedral. In the broad aisle beneath its 
sky-like dome stately churches might stand 
in triple rank with unbent spires. Have 
you looked upon that miracle of architecture 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE KING. 287 

without reflecting, " All that is noblest in 
art and most fertile in genius have here com- 
bined to perpetuate the memory of Simon 
Peter, only because he served the man whom 
a Jewish menial jeered him for knowing, the 
man who was crucified at Golgotha." 

In the same city is a marble stairway. 
Each step is deeply worn by the knees of 
those who have ascended it. Less than 
thirty years ago, I have been told, a queen 
and a beggar might have been seen upon it 
side by side. Neither seemed conscious of 
the other's presence. They moved slowly, 
upon their knees, pausing on every step to 
pray. They believed that once, down those 
same steps from Pilate's judgment hall, 
dropping blood as he went, had walked the 
man who was crucified at Golgotha. " At 
the name of Jesus every knee shall bow." 

You have visited the Campo Santo at 
Pisa? There, inclosed in marble colon- 
nades which artists still make pilgrimages to 
admire, lie the bones of some of the best and 
noblest of Italy. They craved interment 
there as the richest boon posterity could give 
them, because they believed that the dust 
brought from Palestine might once have 
been pressed by the feet of the man who 
was crucified at Golgotha. 



288 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



But these are idle superstitions, the thistle- 
down of history ! They are so, and there- 
fore I repeat them. Thistle-down may show 
how the aerial currents move when boulders 
give no signs. A superstition is a fact as 
truly as Gibraltar, and facts are to be ac- 
counted for. How shall we account for 
these ? Why were such honors never paid 
to any other man ? To-day J esus Christ is 
the central fact of human history. No man 
offers a system of philosophy without feeling 
that he must in some way explain the obvi- 
ous position and apparent influence of Jesus 
Christ. Those who do not love him recog- 
nize his presence. Those who do not confess 
him king, still must classify themselves by 
the relation they sustain toward him ; for he 
is the Greenwich w r hence the longitudes of 
time are calculated, the sun which tells us 
in what latitude we sail. Gibbon, the ablest 
historian, I think, who has ever lived, hating 
Christianity and eager to abolish faith in 
its founder, w r rites his Decline and Fall of 
the Eoman Empire. But Gibbon, equally 
with the most ardent Christian, must con- 
fess the sovereignty of Christ by writing 
every date, not a. U. C, from the founding of 
Koine, but A. D., from the year of Our Lord, 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE KING. 289 

before men will understand or read or buy 
his book. 

Napoleon reminded Bertrand that no man 
had ever lived for whom a century after his 
death a single individual could be found 
willing to die, though after eighteen cen- 
turies millions would gladly give their lives 
for Jesus Christ. "I know men," said the 
emperor " and Jesus Christ is not a man." 
Shall we venture to class him with Socrates 
and Confucius ? Why do ladies choose to 
wear upon their bosoms crosses of gold or 
pearls or diamonds ? Why have they not 
taught jewelers to carve them cups of mala- 
chite or emerald for ornaments to commemo- 
rate the death of Socrates ? The cross was 
the symbol of uttermost degradation and 
ignominy, the gibbet of the ancient world, 
until some power lifted it from the mire and 
stamped it upon the sky in stars. One can- 
not visit the opera, the theatre, or any place 
of fashion without seeing on every hand 
in letters of living light the sign of the Son 
of man, and reading if one has eyes that 
see, " To him every knee shall bow." 

That Jesus did not rise from the dead, and 
that he wrought no miracles may be safely 
conceded to any man who will without the 



290 



ANCIENT CITIES. 



resurrection and without the miracles ade- 
quately explain the place held by Jesus 
Christ to-day. By denying the miracles we 
only make miracles of the conceded facts. 
Before us stands a column overtopping by 
an immeasurable altitude every other pedes- 
tal on earth. No stairway winds around it. 
No ladder made by hands has ever reached 
so high. Upon it stands the man we once 
saw sitting by the well, wearied with his 
journey. How did he get there ? We are 
told he has no wings. Miracles are only 
wings which help us to explain the facts we 
are impotent to deny. 

There are parts of the earth which we 
justly call benighted. They are the parts of 
it which have not yet learned to worship 
Christ. All that are potent among nations 
we clasp in one great word and call Chris- 
tendom or Christ's Kingdom. 

Whatever is ennobling in art, stable in 
statesmanship, uplifting in social life, has 
grown out of the Galilean's grave. To 
name a thought, a word, a deed " unchris- 
tian " is to brand it with a stamp of infamy. 
Free labor was scarcely known upon the 
earth, and slaves were the only workingmen 
outside of Palestine when Jesus died a 



NEW JERUSALEM, THE KING. 291 



slave's death at Golgotha. How many are 
the slaves in Christendom to-day, and at 
whose command have the fetters been 
broken ? Wherever J esus Christ is trusted 
and obeyed, sin and sorrow flee away. How 
shall we account for these facts ? Can we 
be saved by lies ? 

We have watched the careers of other 
conquerors. Has Christ gained the crown 
which grows more radiant each century as 
they have won the crowns which crumble 
with the years ? 

Cast your cannon of a hundred tons. 
Load it to the muzzle. Tip your shot with 
pointed steel. Apply the spark, and you 
can send your bolt 1,200 feet a second. 
In that second, light flashes 200,000 miles. 
"That," says Victor Hugo, "is the differ- 
ence between Napoleon Bonaparte and Je- 
sus Christ." We think it only a part of 
the difference. The whole appears to us to 
be that Christ was Napoleon's creator. 



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